


46+2

by pagetbrewster



Category: Fifth Harmony (Band)
Genre: Camren - Freeform, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 02:47:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 24,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7490220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagetbrewster/pseuds/pagetbrewster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Language bearers, Photographers, Diary makers</em>
  <br/>
  <em>You with your memory are dead, frozen</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Lost in a present that never stops passing</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Here lives the incantation of matter</em>
  <br/>
  <em>A language forever.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Taken from a popular Jungian theory, forty-six and two explains that, with time, our existence will change its very nature. Perhaps along this borrowed time, many other things will change as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She’s been seeing stars for a long time now.

Her friends are dazzling; the city is bright and sweet. There’s been local shows scattered around the whole state, some in California. The road never felt so good on the way to them.

The window to the girls’ apartment is frosted. Lauren doesn’t live there, because there’s a kind element in being alone. This place smells like cashmere and leather, and the vanilla candles burning. That’s the only light flickering on the walls, as they’re cheap bastards and there’s no greater trespass against God than paying the electrical bill.

“Stop staring out the window, dumbass. It never looks any different. We’re gonna be late”, Dinah says, yanking her up and over to the door.

“Ice-skating makes us look soft”, Lauren complains, secretly marveled to be going.

“I didn’t put on this outfit to be staying home tonight”, Normani says, jutting one of her hips out dramatically. “Plus, the more public we get, the more fame. Not saying I’m materialistic, but that’s a good life.”

Lauren rolls her eyes; hoisting the bag they’d all thrown their stuff in over her shoulder. 

Fame did taste pretty right about now.

+++

“I’m falling!” Ally sings gracefully, going down quite the opposite. 

The cold is biting her cheeks and numbing her legs as she goes. There’s a gory sight of couples all around them, and girls pretending like they don’t know how to skate. A light snow dusts her shoulders, and she looks everywhere all at once. 

She hadn’t really noticed Camila on this trip until now. She skated alone, off to the side of the Dinah vs. Normani vs. Ally cluster. She wore a burgundy coat and a white scarf draped over her shoulders, and she’s far more talented at this than she cares to admit. 

Lauren falls behind to offer some company. She never really talks to the girl; she always seems to be doing her own thing; but she takes on cracking all of their resolves as her personal mission.

“Hey”, Lauren says casually as they reach the straightaway.

“Hi”, Camila breathes happily, snowflakes catching on her eyelashes. “This is so beautiful!”

Lauren cranes her head all around, taking in the lights littering the edge of the rink. “I guess you’re right.”

Camila’s eyes are sparkling. “I want Seattle to look like this all the time, you know? Everyone is so joyous, and I know Christmas got over four days ago but the choirs are still singing…” She picks up her foot to test the weight of her skate, deftly balancing on one foot, and then drops it again.

“Where’d you learn how to skate? Didn’t you grow up in Florida too?”

Camila nods. “Miami.” That city aches of familiarity.

“But no, I taught myself. There was a rink right over from my street by a couple blocks, and they’d charge three dollars for you to skate as long as you wanted, from nine in the morning to nine at night. I’d stay as long as I could, pretending like I was right up there with the adults.”

“Can you do any tricks?”

Camila snorts. “Hardly. I was no triple-axel Olympian, but I can still skate backwards. Wanna see?”

A smile spreads across Lauren’s face.

Camila whips around with her head over her shoulder, putting one foot behind the other, carrying herself gracefully across the ice. She catches Lauren’s gaze and breaks out into a wide grin, waving both gloved hands through the snow. The Christmas bows and holly are still up, accentuating the edges of the ice she’s racing around.

Lauren doesn’t understand her one bit, but thinks she wants to.

+++

“She looks like a dumbass with the bottom of her shirt tied up like that.”

“Hey, I like those shirts!”

“Not on her though. She’s a straight-up bitch.”

Ally, Normani, and Dinah are all sitting in the backseat, gathered around Normani’s phone. 

Lauren’s driving, naturally, and Camila’s in the front seat. Her fingers toy with the hem of her coat, and she’s staring out the window. The city lights cast shadows in edges of her eyes and she’s whispering, mumbling something Lauren can’t hear.

She’s odd, but Lauren likes her.

“Guys! We just got invited to a party!” Normani squeals. 

“Who invited us?” Lauren asks, looking up in the mirror.

“Some guy I met when we were all screwing around in the studio last week. Technician guy, maybe. His name’s Graham; the party’s at his place tomorrow night at eleven.”

“This isn’t like an official affair, right?”

“Nah”, Normani says, shaking her head. “He’s cool. Are we gonna go?”

“We should go!” shouts Ally.

“Girl, shut the fuck up; my eardrums are suffering”, Dinah says. “But yeah, we should go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this first chapter has provided you somewhat of a glimpse as to what may come. As for these notes, below, I will clarify a few things that I may have forgotten to include/ elaborate on, and if it seems as if I forgot to leave one, check the end of the chapter. I will also provide you with a song I used to write each section of the chapters so you may feel as I did when I told this story.
> 
> In my story, Fifth Harmony is not the sweeping sensation they are today. They may be just as talented, but there was no wild fame, and there was no X-Factor.
> 
> For the first mild banter, I played the hell out of "Hang Me Up To Dry" by Cold War Kids, and for the skating scene, I listened to "Flowers In Your Hair" by The Lumineers more times than I care to admit.
> 
> Stick with me as best as you can, because I'm gonna try to take your heart and break it.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m wearing brown lipstick.”

“Thanks for the announcement. I care a lot.”

Lauren hears a muttering of “bitch” and then a clattering of what must be Normani crashing to the ground. 

She scoffs and smiles while pulling a white tank top over her head. Music plays from the speaker on Ally’s dresser, and she’s dancing away her nerves. 

Thankfully though, the sound covers up Normani and Dinah’s UFC fight in the bathroom.

+++

They take a cab this time, wary of the fact that none of them wants to be the designated driver tonight. 

They clatter up to the address Graham gave them, hearing the gradual increase in the volume of the music ricocheting up the stairwell.

“This is gonna be fun!” Ally squeaks, dashing ahead of the rest of them and knocking on the door. The shopping bags containing their alcohol clink together in Dinah’s hands until they wait for Graham to answer the door. And then he does.

“Holy…”

+++

Camila never got the chance to finish. 

Streamers and hanging lights dangled from the ceiling. People danced, drank, and the room was heavy with smoke. The lights were all off and music was blaring; it was a wonder nobody had called the police yet. A pong table was set up in the middle of the living room and a large TV with _New Year’s Rockin’ Eve_ played. 

Ally giggled and they all grabbed each other, wandering out near the couch on the other side of the room. There was a free space there, and Lauren would like to say that they were modest and aware of everyone else there, but their bodies said otherwise. Normani was all up on Ally, Ally on Dinah, Dinah on Lauren, and everyone on everyone else. Sweat beaded her forehead before too long, but she didn’t care.

They were packed like sardines. Lauren didn’t even know who was grinding on her anymore. She had a hard lemonade in her hand, laughing up at no one, and then she saw Camila.

Camila sat, a trying smile on her face, observing the festivities. She had her legs crossed on the couch, sipping slowly from a cup which Lauren assumed was the lemonade/ blueberry vodka drink she had seen Graham pouring in the kitchen. She seemed both content and out of place, so Lauren wrung herself out of the guy’s arms, much to his discontent, and reached for Camila’s hand. 

“Come here.”

Camila smiled gratefully, taking one of the bags that held the wine with her.

Lauren had seen a couple people go up to the roof and then come back down through the fire escape, so she did the same. People were far too busy to notice, luckily. She pried the window open, shuddering at the cold air.

“I brought a blanket.”

She turns around and Camila’s wearing a wide grin and a red knit blanket.

“Where the hell…”

“I stole it, from the couch. Didn’t think he would care.”

Lauren shakes her head, careful of the ice she’s sure has frozen onto the stairs. “You’re wild.”

“A big giant rebel”, Camila adds, trotting up after her.

The city is bright with celebration. Lauren can hear all the parties going on down below and across the street, the honking of cars stuck in traffic on the roads, and the music thundering on in the apartment. There are hardly any stars tonight, only dirty, heavy clouds and some planes.

There’s a wicker loveseat facing out onto the street and the sky, so Camila spreads out the blanket and they sit, wrapping it around themselves. 

Lauren sets her drink on the armrest, pulling out one of the bottles of merlot that Camila brought upstairs, and Camila reaches for a pack of cigarettes in her pocket.

She takes two out, holding one for Lauren. “Want one?”

Lauren nods hesitantly. “I didn’t think you smoked.”

Camila frowns. “I don’t, not usually. But this is a new year.”

“In twenty-six minutes, anyway.”

“Whatever.” Camila shrugs with a smile, flicking her lighter and holding the flame in front of Lauren. Lauren take a drag as the cigarette lights, exhaling, swearing it’s so cold that she thinks her breath is crystallizing in the night.

“I wanna try something.”

Lauren looks over, just as Camila leans in.

_Holy hell._

For about a half a second, Lauren thinks Camila’s putting the moves on her, but she’s not. Instead, she ducks forward, cigarette in her mouth, making contact with Lauren’s. She lights hers as if with a lighter, sucking in as she does so, inches away from Lauren’s face.

“I’ve never done that before”, Camila justifies, pulling away.

“Can’t say I have either.”

“Now you have”, Camila says, finishing the last of her drink.

Lauren dangles the cigarette between her teeth and twists off the top of the bottle, taking a drink.

The wine is sweet and carbonated. It says it’s got a high alcohol content but Lauren can hardly taste it. The blackberry flavor sticks in her mouth and she passes the bottle to Camila.

It goes like that for a while, drinking, smoking one cigarette apiece, and then two, scarcely talking, but it’s not awkward at all. Lauren just watches the sky get darker, and she’s strangely at peace. 

“I saw you drawing earlier today.”

Camila smiles and looks down. “Yeah. I’m not too good, but I enjoy it.”

“I highly doubt that.” She teases. “You should draw me.”

Camila’s eyes twinkle in the roof light. “Okay.”

A moment passes.

“How come you don’t live with me and the rest of the girls?”

Lauren shrugs. “I don’t know. There’s something peaceful in living alone. It gives me a lot more space to think.”

“A crowded place in Miami makes you wish you had all that much earlier.”

“I forgot you were a Miami girl, too.”

“Yeah”, Camila says dreamily. “I was born in Cuba, then I lived in Mexico, and then Miami. Now I’m here. I’m not sure where I miss.”

“I miss Miami.”

Camila nods, smoking a little, drinking a little more. “I do too.”

All of a sudden, in the following silence, cheers erupt from the room below. _“What the hell?”_ Lauren mutters quietly, checking her phone.

12:00.

“Hello 2016.”

The corner of Camila’s lips upturn, and then it falls again.

“What’s the matter?”

Camila turns to face her, a wandering look in her eyes. “Nothing. I just remember; there was this boy back at home, Miguel. Sweet kid. Anyway, I was at a New Year’s party, I was fifteen, and there he was, two years older than me. He had kind eyes. That’s what attracts me the most, you know, kind eyes. We were in the corner, and the clock struck midnight. Everyone was wild, kissing everyone else. He kissed me too, but it was different. He took his time with me, all slow. That was my first kiss, and I’d never imagined it would be anything like that. I miss that feeling, somebody bringing you into the New Year with them. It doesn’t even have to be romantic, it’s just hopeful.”

“I don’t want you to be sad.”

“I’ll get over it, Lauren. And I’m not sad, I’m just missing it.” 

So that’s when Lauren gives the proposition, and she doesn’t know why. All she knows is that Camila’s far too sunken in, and the fireworks from down the way have started firing up, and they’re beautiful. In the pure and innocent interest in bringing her up into this joy, Lauren says:

“I’ll kiss you.”

Camila’s breath stops.

“No, I’m for real. You deserve somebody. And since you don’t have them, I’ll be a substitute just for a little while. Then you can find someone to kiss you for real.”

“You’re absolutely fucking insane. Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes!” Camila bursts out, laughing. “Yes, you can kiss me.”

“Alright.”

“Alright?”

“It’s fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Now shut the hell up and let’s do this.”

“That’s no way to treat a lady.”

By now, the oddity of this night has brought them together and here they are, millimeters apart, smiling benevolently on the other.

Though it was Lauren that offered, it was Camila who kissed her first. 

Her lips were cold and quivering, and they tasted of smoke, then wine. Her whole body was shaking with nerves, so Lauren pulled away.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine, I'm good. You’re good.”

“Good? I kissed you for three seconds!”

“Fine then. Kiss me again.” Camila makes overly dramatic smooches into the night air. “Come on Lauren, kiss-“

Lauren can tell Camila didn’t think she would take her seriously, so she takes her by surprise. This time though, when Camila starts shaking, she puts one hand on Camila’s shoulder, the other on her heart. It slows with calmness and the whole kiss is slow, delicate.

Kind.

Lauren pulls away again for good. She grins, her cheeks stinging in the icy breeze. She stands, kicking aside the empty wine bottle, helping Camila to her feet, stumbling back as she does so. “I’m so drunk.”

Camila bites her lip and shakes her head with a smile. “I’m so happy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, it's me again, with your promised playlist:
> 
> The beginning Normani and Dinah scene I wrote to "I Turn My Camera On" by Spoon. Their party music was "Let Me Think About It" by Ida Corr vs. Fedde le Grande, and you are refrained from judging. I wrote to rooftop scene to "Amsterdam" by Coldplay.
> 
> Listen if you'd like; sync our thoughts for three minutes or so. And even if you read this and wonder why you did, leaving unaffected after the entirety of this story, I thank you anyway for listening.


	3. Chapter 3

Two or three weeks after that drew on. Hell-bent on becoming more unified, they toured the city and the regions outside of it, hiking sometimes, singing together, sightseeing. They became undeniably close, and Lauren grew to completely adore her friendships with each and every one of them.

She learned that Ally loves _Saved by the Bell_ and bright pink. She knows now that Normani was a gymnast and that she knows how to make French fries, and that Dinah still watches kid shows and has a million brothers and sisters.

She spent this time getting to know Camila better, too. She was born in Cojimar, reads constantly, and she’s messy as hell. One time, when they were all together, Lauren crawled up on the couch next to her and watched her draw.

“What’s that?”

It’s quite a beautiful drawing of a bridge over a quiet pond in the springtime, flowers dotting the hill. The sun shines in the corner, hardly obscured by trees.

Camila looks up, glasses pushed up on the bridge of her nose, smiling. “It’s a place I like to go in the Japanese garden in Washington Park. See, I drew this from the bench I always go to. It’s what I see every time I go there, unfortunately, I don’t think I caught it very well.”

Lauren shakes her shoulder in comfort. “It’s gorgeous. I’ve never been, but I think it looks just like that.”

+++

They had a little show in the coffee shop on the next street. It was the quietest event they had in a while, and they toned down the content in lieu of the usual crazy noise they like to make. Playing the piano felt nice in the quiet of their tiny shelter of wood floors and espresso from the raging snow outside.

When they were done, every pair of hands in the building applauded them. One of the baristas brought them all a hot coffee, for which they were grateful.

“I’m so excited for LA”, Normani gushes, sipping her latte. “Imagine all the people, our outfits, the lights…” She shudders with excitement. 

“We’re gonna look so hot”, Dinah remarks, cringing at the boiling temperature of her coffee.

Lauren looks down at her cup, at the pretty leaf-like shape made from the creamer at the surface. “I wonder how they do that?”

“Do what?”

Lauren looks up at Ally. “This thing with the creamer. I want to know.”

“Oh, I know”, Camila says casually.

Lauren’s eyes get wide. “How?”

“It’s not that hard. They just swirl around the coffee and pour the creamer around in that direction.” She demonstrates with her finger around the edge of the cup. “And then they pour it right down the middle. It makes the leaf.”

Lauren looks up to share her awe with the other girls, but they’ve gone back to talking about LA. She turns back to Camila. “I have to try.”

Camila smiles, taking a drink. “One of these days.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took place over a series of songs in some makeshift playlist, including:
> 
> -"Winter Song" by The Head and the Heart  
> -"Stubborn Love" by The Lumineers  
> and -"Lost in my Mind" by The Head and the Heart  
> amongst others.
> 
> Thank you!


	4. Chapter 4

The more time that passes, the colder everything seems to get.

The walk to the girls’ apartment seems especially frigid, and Lauren hides in her hood. The gray streaks of a Washington sunset hint the distance, and the air tastes like exhaust fumes and the fresh roses they’re selling on the street.

Ally opens the door as soon as Lauren’s knuckles touch it. “Hey!”

“Hi”, Lauren greets, looking around inside as she steps in. 

Normani and Dinah are playing Jenga on the coffee table, with as much possible violence as they could muster. Ally returns to her spot on the floor, just as the clock ticks seven.

“Where’s Camila?”

They look around for a minute. “Oh, she went to go get ice from downstairs.”

Lauren nods, shedding her coat on the couch and filling in her role as the even number.

They play round after round for about an hour or so; until the minutes blend together into an energetic conglomerate of time they’re together. She dodges many a Jenga piece that Dinah throws at her face, much to Normani and Ally’s delight.

“Guys, where’s Camila?”

It’s eight-thirty.

“Is she still not back?” Lauren asked timidly.

Normani shrugs. “She does this sometimes.”

Dinah looks up at the clock. “You should probably go find her. She likes to pull all-nighters.”

“Yeah, um-“ Lauren peers over the window at the dining room table. It’s freezing rain outside, and a black leather bag sits on the counter. “She didn’t take her purse.”

With worry beginning to fray her nerves, she picks up the bag and goes into Camila’s room, a place she’s never been.

She knew Camila was messy, but not like this. The strange thing was, everything else was immaculate. But there were papers everywhere. She looks closer. Drawings.

She sees one of Miami, of a flower glowing in the night, and one of each of them. She captured all of them in exceptional detail, Lauren notices, running her thumb over all four of them. They were indicative of an artist of immense talent, or they had been, until someone covered all the drawings.

Lauren gasps. There had to have been thousands of numbers scrawled all over them. Formulas. Some that she recognizes from college, and some that she doesn’t. There are continuous boxes drawn, spiraling out, marked by an outwardly infinite line that doesn’t stop until Camila must’ve run out of paper. These drawings are the only ones that are still intact, as what must’ve been dozens of others ripped up and thrown in the corner of her room, with the same numbers all over.

She notices something, and then scours the room to make triple-sure that it’s true. She doesn’t know how, but it is.

Lauren’s portrait is the only one that hasn’t been destroyed.

She’s in awe as notices some extra details that Camila added onto hers. She drew a sparkle in Lauren’s eye, a smirk on her face, and a blush on her cheeks. She almost wished she looked like that in real life.

And then, a crippling feeling of dread washed over her whole body. 

_She’s not here, and it’s twenty degrees outside._

Just then, she finds another drawing in the drawer of Camila’s nightstand. It’s the one she’d been working on that one day she showed Lauren, the bridge in Washington Park. Immediately, she shoves the drawing into her purse.

As fast as she came in here, she stumbles back out down the stairs.

+++

The car ride is a long one, and she speeds as fast as she can without drawing attention. The rain splashes onto her windshield, freezing as it does, and then melts away as the windshield wipers shrug it away. It pounds on the roof of her car, all around her, and she has to force herself not to run any red lights until she gets to the place she’s been looking for.

Washington Park.

She screeches into a parking spot, tripping over her boots on the way out. 

“Camila!”

She doesn’t give a shit who thinks she’s crazy for screaming in a park after sunset. 

_“Camila!”_

She takes the drawing out and uses it as reference. And then she sees it, through the frosted trees and over a stream.

The bridge, just as Camila drew it.

She runs along the sidewalk, slipping up a little, landing on her elbow both times. But she doesn’t care; she crawls until she can stand again.

She holds up the sketch to the lamplight. According to it, the angle should match perfectly where she stands.

It does, and there’s a body, sitting on a bench right in front of her, ten feet away.

“Camila!”

The girl doesn’t answer. 

“Camila?” Lauren runs over.

There she is, in her sweatpants and a T-shirt; what must’ve been her pajamas for the night. She’s freezing to the touch, goosebumps covering every inch of her. Her eyes are bloodshot and there’s snow sticking to her hair. 

She’s too cold to shiver.

Lauren grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her. “Camila, come on, we gotta go. Come on honey, it’s freezing out here.”

Camila lulls her head over to the side. _“It’s cold.”_

Lauren immediately rips her coat off and throws it over Camila’s head. “We have to go home. I’m taking you home.”

Camila shakes her head, her eyes watery, poking through the hood. “I can’t. I’m waiting for the sunset.”

Lauren reaches up and pulls the hood farther back. “Camz”, she says gently, “the sun set two hours ago.”

“It did?” Camila asks, her voice breaking. She looks up at the sky, and sobs rack through her body. “It did.”

“Yeah, sweetheart”, Lauren reaches her hands out and pulls Camila to her feet, only to have her tremble and struggle to keep her footing. “Here, get on my back.”

Camila obeys, and Lauren hoists her up. It’s very fortunate that Camila is tiny, even though she parked a couple minutes away.

The walk is quiet, with Camila’s soft cries in her ear. She can’t lose it now; she doesn’t even know what to think. She just has to get home. 

Camila slips into the front seat, Lauren in the driver’s. She turns the heat on as high as it would go in a breeze. She leans over and puts Camila’s seat down, listening as she drives for Camila’s breaths to turn steady. They do.

Lauren opts out of taking Camila back to her apartment, settling for her own. Her building is much smaller, thankfully, and many of her neighbors are older and can’t hear well. The only sound they make is their feet on the stairs, carrying them up to where Lauren lives on the third floor.

Lauren doesn’t know much; only that tonight is very strange. 

+++

The water runs for a little until it gets hot. Camila stands behind her, still in Lauren’s coat, dripping cold water on the floor.

Lauren gets off her knees next to the tub. Camila’s an honest-to-God wreck, having just woken up in a daze. Lauren doesn’t think she remembers much, but she hasn’t talked.

“You need to get in here and warm up.”

Camila says nothing, staring at the same spot on the wall.

Lauren pulls the coat off her shoulders, exposing a soaked red T-shirt advertising a blood drive. Camila starts shivering again, so Lauren works quickly, throwing her clothes in the hamper, opting to keep her in her underwear. She loops her arm around Camila’s waist, helping her into the shower.

Camila flinches at the pain of the hot water, and then sits down on the floor of the bathtub. The water collects in drops and runs down her back and she’s quiet.

“Camila, what happened?”

Camila looks up, the last of her mascara smudged on her edges of her eyes. “There’s not much to tell.”

“I want to know, please.”

Camila shakes her head, water dripping from her eyelashes. “You’re gonna think I’m crazy.”

Lauren kneels back down on the bathmat. “I promise I won’t.”

Camila licks her bottom lip, and then leans back onto the wall. “I saw a guy for a while, but nothing seemed to work, so I just stopped going, and I didn’t talk about it; I don’t know.”

“What do you have?”

Camila looks away. “They said it was bipolar, so I didn’t think it was too bad, but they never told me how to make it better. It makes it hard to live, you know, one minute I can’t get out of bed, and the next, I’m flying. I don’t like how my head feels.” She shrugs, trying to make it casual, but her voice cracks and then there are tears again. “My brain just feels like it weighs a million pounds. I feel insane, I’m sorry.”

Lauren reaches out and grabs Camila’s hand, the one that’s resting on her thigh. “Please don’t be. I’m just worried about you, you understand? Normani says you like to stay out all night and it’s really cold out.”

“I don’t remember anything”, Camila says, gripping Lauren’s fingers under the hot spray of the water. 

“But I do”, Lauren says, stifling a cry that’s burning in the back of her throat. “And it was freezing. I know that if I didn’t find you, you could’ve gotten really sick. I know you can take care of yourself, but I want you to take a break for a couple weeks. Get better.”

“How?”

Lauren tips Camila’s head toward her. “Stay with me, just for a few days. Get back on your feet. You can sleep all the time if you want, but I want to help you.”

Camila smiles a little, briefly, but genuine. “I’ll try not to sleep.”

Lauren blinks back her tears. “But you’re gonna sleep tonight.”

Camila is beautiful. She’s seen the other girls call her cute, catcalls rolling down Main Street that she’s hot, but she’s beautiful. Right now, with strings of wet hair sticking to her face and back, in the warm heat of the shower, in all-black underwear on the floor of Lauren’s bathtub, breathing slowly, Lauren has never thought that more. She’s beautiful.

+++

Here’s how it was supposed to go. Lauren texted the girls that Camila was staying at her place tonight. She was going to give Camila her bed, and set up a little something for herself on the couch. She was halfway down the hallway after putting Camila to bed when she heard somebody padding down after her.

She turned, and there was Camila, in one of Lauren’s oversized shirts, her clothes having been tossed in the laundry. “Will you come with me?”

“You want me to sleep with you?”

Camila nods. “Yeah. I don’t take up too much room.”

That was the first lie.

At five in the morning, when Lauren gave up going back to sleep for good, came the second. 

This was Lauren’s lie to herself. When she woke up to the first falsehood; Camila’s arms and legs tangled in her own, she promised that she would ignore her rising feelings and opinions from the similar knot in her stomach. She promised it would mean nothing.

Of course, it didn’t.

Lauren did hold true to one thing, though, she didn’t overanalyze. She knew the feeling of impending doom, that whatever happened here, or didn’t, would change a lot of things. So, like the coward she allowed herself to be, she didn’t think about it.

She wouldn’t fall asleep again.

+++

Camila woke up at about seven, and Lauren pretended like she’d been asleep the whole time. She heard Camila rustling through the cabinets, giving her an ordinance as an excuse for her similar rising time.

Camila stands at the counter, with two cups of coffee in front of her, and a bottle of creamer in her hand. “You wanna learn?”

Lauren nods, coming over.

Camila swirls the coffee around, and as it’s still continuing, pours the creamer in the same direction. Then she splashes a little down the center of the swirl, and it makes a leaf.

“You try.”

Lauren takes the bottle from her hand, mimicking the same action, with, miraculously, the same result. She looks up in amazement at Camila’s glittering eyes, clapping her congratulations. “You did it!”

Lauren felt the benevolence of a juvenile accomplishment. She took her cup proudly, planning with Camila the whole day ahead of them.

Lauren never realized that this is what it’s like to not live alone, be it for a week or so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part, until Lauren and Camila's rendezvous in the park, was written to "In The World" by Stephen Rennicks, a song I hold very dear to my heart. The bench scene I wrote to "Where Is My Mind" by Maxence Cyrin, which is an excellent and very haunting cover of a song done in the mid-nineties by the Pixies. Everything after that was "Close To You" by Rihanna; an exquisite song from a woman who doesn't typically do slow songs. I recommend all of these. 
> 
> If ever you are confused about something at any given time, feel free to comment and I will most definitely get back to you.


	5. Chapter 5

“You thought Dinah was bad enough? Try this bitch…on a trampoline”, Dinah says, hurtling toward Normani.

“Whose idea…was this?” Normani says, dodging Dinah with a series of flips otherwise restricted by gravity.

“Yours, dumbass.”

They’d decided on spending the next few hours at the trampoline center. Lauren liked it, as it allowed her to feel like a gymnast. Nobody really talked about the night before, thankfully. Lauren called Ally that morning and let her know that Camila would be staying with her for a while. She didn’t ask questions. 

Camila seemed much more alive. She was messing around with the girls, much to their delight. They’d stopped by the girls’ apartment that morning and picked up some of her stuff, so now she wore a little bow in her hair, and a huge smile like a child. Lauren caught herself smiling too, until Ally yanked her to the side.

“What’s going on?”

“About last night? I can’t really-“

“No”, Ally interrupted softly. “I mean with her, and you.”

Lauren freezes. “Nothing.”

“You’ve been staring at her this whole day like she’s the last person on earth.”

“I’m just worried about her, that’s all. I just wanna help.”

Ally nods, smoothing her sleeve. “Okay. Let’s go.”

+++

After staying at the pizza place until closing, naturally, the girls went their separate ways, Lauren heroically volunteering to take the leftovers home. They carpooled with the girls back to the apartment, Lauren picked up her car, and they were on their way back.

“You like to stare out the window.”

Camila smiles in the green light. “I don’t want to miss anything.”

“You won’t. You’re twenty-three. You’ve got a whole big life ahead of you.” Lauren switches lanes.

“Maybe not. You never know”, she says quietly.

Lauren slams on the brakes in the turn lane; grateful that she took the lesser-known streets so there aren’t any people. She grabs Camila’s wrist, feeling her pulse thrum under her skin. Camila’s eyes are wide and brown, running over every inch of Lauren’s face, out of fear.

Lauren focuses all of her desperate energy onto Camila’s clenched teeth and quivering lips. “Yes, you do. You have years and years and years, Camila.”

A dark understanding spreads out in front of them.

“Last night, you called me Camz.”

Lauren sighs, loosening her grip on Camila’s wrist. “Yeah, I did.”

Camila nods, running her thumb over Lauren’s hand. “I liked that”, she says, barely above a whisper.

Lauren puts their hands above Camila’s heart, squeezing once before letting go and putting the car back into drive. “Let’s go home…Camz.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ever-so-necessary trampoline scene was written to "In Harmony In Silver" by Cold War Kids, which is one I also immensely love. The scene from the car was "Cold Arms" by Mumford & Sons.
> 
> For any good things I may receive, or at least hope to, I thank you in advance.


	6. Chapter 6

_“I’m gonna give you the bed tonight”, Lauren says, locking the front door. “I think you’ll like all the space.”_

_Lauren swears she sees a flash of disappointment across Camila’s face, but it’s quickly replaced by a reassuring smile. “Yeah, sure. Goodnight, Lauren.”_

_“Goodnight Camila.”_

Lauren fell asleep quickly on the couch, covered in somebody’s red knit blanket. It was a rocky sleep to begin with, but she’s awoken by the sound of somebody’s cough underneath her.

She sits up. “Oh my God, who-“

“Shh…” someone reassures. 

Lauren looks down, and there’s Camila. She’d put a pillow on the floor and was wrapped in a sheet from Lauren’s bed.

Lauren furrows her eyebrows. “Have you been sleeping here?”

Camila looks down, then back up, and nods. 

“Were you scared?”

“No, I just…”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Camila gathers up the sheet and heads back into the bedroom, before Lauren grabs her shoulder and whirls her around.

“What…”

Lauren falls silent.

She still can’t explain it. Years later, after everything had happened, she would understand. But now, when she’s twenty-four and standing in her living room, the clock just shy of three in the morning, traffic lines crawling across the floors, Camila ghosting the edges of the last explainable space between them, she doesn’t know anything other than what the world looks like right here.

Camila does it first, and she tastes like New Year’s. She’s slow, naturally, and Lauren feels every blood cell running through her veins like the Rio Grande in a storm. Clouds swirl outside and energy swirls here, thorough and soft. She kisses her like there’s no such thing as time; it’s a messy hum of gravity holding them down, but not anymore. Lauren could be on the ceiling for all she knows.

When Camila pulls away, and Lauren realizes her arms are holding their bodies together, she asks.

“Why?”

Camila doesn’t smile. “I could tell.”

Lauren tilts her head to the side.

“The second you took me up to the rooftop, that’s when I knew. When you wanted to kiss me, not because you just wanted to, but because you wanted me to feel safe and happy again. The way you reassure me, when you always want to know what I’m thinking. You love to drive me home and look at me when I’m looking at Seattle. You listen to me when everybody else stopped. When you knew right where to find me that night. Yeah, I remember now; when you carried me home and cried when you thought I fell asleep and the way you looked at me on the bathroom floor. That night, when you woke up at five in the morning, and I could feel you looking at me, I could feel the smile on your face and when you held me a little tighter. When I woke up this morning, and you had to pretend like you’d fallen asleep since then. Why did you think I stood there with the coffee? I knew you’d been up for hours. The things you do when I’m not looking, Lauren; I see all of them. I see all of you.”

Lauren can’t wait anymore.

She wants to be gentle, she really does. But she hears all of those words, all over again thousands of times at once. And then Camila’s opening her mouth, and Lauren’s gripping her waist so tight that it’s a wonder Camila’s ribs aren’t broken. 

Lauren pulls back, and Camila immediately kisses her jaw. Her knees buckle and they sink together; Lauren knows she won’t be standing for long.

“Can I carry you right this time?”

Camila laughs a little, then nods. “Yeah, you can.”

So Lauren lifts her up again and carries her back into the dark. Camila’s lips are on her neck and Lauren fights the whimper growing in her throat.

She throws Camila down on the white comforter, situating herself between Camila’s thighs, and then, worried, runs her hands up and down her sides.

Camila grabs her arms. “I’m not gonna break.”

“Yeah”, Lauren whispers.

Camila sits up, threading her fingers through Lauren’s hair, pulling her closer. Her fingertips barely slip along the side of Lauren’s neck, nerves firing every place they leave. Lauren kisses her with haste, feeling Camila’s hands slide down to the hem of her shirt, shaking as they do, pulling it up and over her head.

The air of a room threatened by February hits Lauren’s bare chest, and she shivers. Tentatively, Camila feels every muscle in her stomach in concentration, and then looks up.

Her eyes are wild with surety, so Lauren pulls off her shirt too. She sheds every last piece of clothing between them, and when she turns back after finding a place on the floor to put their clothes, Camila’s in the middle of the bed, leaning on the headboard, her legs crossed and knees drawn up.

Lauren crawls carefully over to her, nudging her thighs apart with the back of her hands. Camila isn’t saying much, but it’s okay, because the surefire energy sprinting between their minds is more than words.

She’s wary of putting her full weight down on Camila, but she insists, linking her arms under Lauren’s shoulders and pulling her down.

Her hand cups Camila’s jaw, tilting her eyes up from her hips. _“You look beautiful like this”,_ she murmurs.

Camila smiles for one of the first times tonight. She blinks a thank you, the edges of her eyes crinkling with happiness. Lauren brushes a stray strand of hair from out of her eyes and kisses her forehead.

She rolls her hips forward, just to test it out. Camila gasps loudly and wraps her legs around Lauren’s back, holding her closer. Lauren smiles into the side of Camila’s neck, dipping her hand lower a little bit more every time she juts forward. Camila’s anxious but she’s patient, curious.

Lauren brushes over her once, with her thumb. Camila’s hips skyrocket upward, to her touch. She’s blinking like crazy now, her eyes rolled up to the ceiling. Lauren goes back to her neck, sucking just as she slides over her again. 

There’s something in her that wants the process now. She wants it to begin and continue, but never to end. She could stay like this forever. But to spare Camila the mercy, and herself the wait, she gently slips into her, scraping her teeth over her neck as she does so.

Camila groans loudly, despite of the neighbor’s proximity. They don’t matter now.

Lauren doesn’t want to hurt her, not at all. So she keeps her hand at her hips, thrusting softly each time. Her other hand holds the back of Camila’s neck up, feeling the strain of her muscles as she rolls her head around. She picks up the pace a little every fifteen seconds or so, enlightened by incredible sounds of encouragement. 

She doesn’t know how long they’ve been here, or how long they’ll stay. But she kisses Camila the answer, that she wants her like this, in her home, sharing her happiness, her morning coffee, and her company until the end of time.

So maybe it’s fast-paced, these thoughts of Lauren’s, but nothing’s exactly slow right now.

Somewhere, somebody’s driving home from work, and he’ll have dinner with his daughter. Somewhere else, somebody finished those twenty-six miles. Whatever the world’s grand achievements, she’s pretty damn proud to have Camila. 

That girl is some prize.

Camila reaches her hand up, and curls her fingers around Lauren’s jaw. She’s muttering things that any holy person would scorn them for saying, but it’s quiet, and Lauren hardly notices until her hips tense up and there’s a different kind of sound coming from her. 

She uses her free hand to tilt Camila’s head up, kissing her deeply, just once. 

She whispers in her ear. “Camila.”

She turns Camila’s head towards her.

“Look at me.”

So Camila does, and Lauren almost loses it herself. She keeps perfect eye contact, her arms wrapping around Lauren’s shoulders. Lauren can feel every second of it, every thought running through Camila’s head. They are one now.

Camila cries out into the sleeping city, grasping at Lauren for dear life. She’s wild, frantic, and everywhere, but neither of them mind; they’re just together now, despite what happens, that’s all that matters.

Camila moans softly into Lauren’s ear, pulling her into a soft embrace that lasts forever. She’s breathless, kissing the side of Lauren’s head, holding them together for dear life.

_“Thank you.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was both one of the easiest to write, and one of the hardest. I'll tell you why.
> 
> Most obviously, I'd been waiting for it. When I started out, I readily believed that this was the design. I wouldn't have admitted it, nor was it even a conscious thought, but we all have a habit of wanting to speed things up before their time.
> 
> After I got done, I realized that this is simply a part of the bigger picture. No humans exist solely for sex and materialism, neither do stories.
> 
> I wrote this chapter to "The Mighty Rio Grande" by This Will Destroy You. It's one of the most captivating songs I've ever heard, and I hope you feel the same.
> 
> I also hope that you do not make the same mistake as me in wanting to complete things before they even start.


	7. Chapter 7

They’re all at the girls’ apartment the next morning, as Dinah had offered them breakfast. Breakfast to Dinah, however, constituted the last box of Froot Loops. 

Normani and Ally slept soundly on Normani’s floor, and the remaining three had made idle conversation until Camila excused herself to the bathroom.

When Camila was safely gone and the lock to the bathroom door had clicked, she turned to Dinah.

“I had sex with her.”

Dinah immediately projectile-spits every ounce of cereal and milk that had been in her mouth forward onto the table, and on Lauren. “You did _what?”_

“Shut the fuck up”, Lauren hisses, getting out napkins and picking a stray Loop from her hair. “You heard me.”

“Bitch... _how?”_

“It’s amazing, Dinah, how this process works. When two people like each other, _very_ much…”

“You know what I mean.”

Lauren sighs, smiling a little as she mops up the milk from the table. “It just happened, you know? I don’t know how to explain it. But it made sense.”

Dinah tilts her head at an impossible angle, folding her hands under her chin. “Aw, Lolo’s gettin’ soft, how sweet…”

“Don’t start-“

“Hey guys, watcha talking about?” Camila smiles, sitting next to Lauren at the table. Her phone clatters to the floor out of her pocket and she leans down to get it.

“Definitely not Lauren’s…hoe-ish activities…” Dinah mutters with a laugh, receiving a swift kick in the shin. “Ow.”

“Huh?” Camila asks, clicking her phone off. 

“Oh, nothing. Hey, today’s our ceramics class, guys.” Dinah shovels another spoonful into her mouth.

“Speaking of going soft…”

+++

“You can make anything you want”, the ceramics teacher drones on, demonstrating exceptional pieces from the classes before.

“Anything I want…hey guys, I’m gonna craft-“

“No, you are not going to craft a dick, Dinah”, Normani says, forming the base for what must a mug.

“Don’t tell me how to live, Mani. She said I could make anything I want.”

“Except that, if we ever want to come back here.”

Dinah scoffs, intensely concentrating on what she could do instead. Ally’s making a little flower, Lauren might make an Eiffel Tower or something, and Camila’s cutting a perfect square out of her lump of clay.

“What are you making?” Lauren asks, leaning over.

Camila flicks her eyes up through her glasses, smiling. “You’ll see.”

The whole thing lasted an hour. In about a week, they’d leave that building again; Ally with a bright pink tulip, Normani with a spoon-holder, Camila with something she refuses to let Lauren see, Lauren with a decent enough Eiffel Tower, and Dinah with as much of a realistic-looking penis as she could shape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a craving need for some light-hearted positivity. I wrote the beginning of this chapter to "Home" by Explosions in the Sky, which is just a simple instrumental, and the art scene to "Light of the Morning" by Band of Skulls. Granted, neither of these songs really convey the dialogue as accurately as I might have hoped, but they did trigger the appropriate inspiration in me to write it.
> 
> Thank you!


	8. Chapter 8

The lights are astounding.

Cameras snap in coral-blossomed flashes, the heat of the equipment raising the temperature ten degrees for them. She can’t tell if the people are shouting or singing, but it sounds wonderful.

Oh, Lauren misses this. This is one of their largest venues yet, a winter music festival in the park. They got an amazing stage, with hundreds of eyes painting them with fascination. Dinah’s on the drums, Ally on the bass guitar, Normani on the electric guitar, Camila on the acoustic, and Lauren playing piano. They’re all singing together, having the time of their lives, and every time they perform Lauren gets reminded of how much she loves this. 

She falls in love with the audience too; their applause fills Lauren’s heart with racing excitement. And they planned to change in the car and head to the club after, something Lauren hasn’t done in awhile. 

The show ends far too soon. The audience is wild, and a voice over the audio system thanks them and introduces somebody else. They’re all in a clamor down the steps, boots clicking on the sidewalk. “Party time!” Ally sings.

+++

The club was packed, and they got many congratulations from people who had either seen or heard about their performance. 

She tried to stick with Camila but the girl was being awfully social, they all were, so they split up. Lauren headed for the bar, and the man immediately recognized her. “Hey, I’ve been hearing about your group all night. Congrats! What’ll it be?”

Lauren grins shyly. “I’ll take a Jack and Coke, thank you so much.”

They talk for a while, and Lauren can’t see any of her friends anymore. She tells herself it’s okay and continues chatting, but she can’t help the dreadful feeling settling in her stomach.

She gets another, thanking him and then disappearing into the crowd. She cuts her way through seas of dancers, finding Dinah and Normani hitting severely on a couple guys who actually seemed to be enjoying it.

“Hey guys, have you seen Camila?”

Normani cranes her head around. “No, but she went that way earlier.” She points to the corner of the room that held the tables.

“Thanks”, she says absent-mindedly.

There sits Camila, Lauren can see her through twenty or so people. An older guy is explaining something in depth to her, holding out something on his fingertip. Camila nods, taking it from him and placing it on her tongue.

The blood runs from Lauren’s head and she goes to run over, but Dinah slaps her hand on Lauren’s shoulder from behind. “You seem very unhappy. Did you find Camila, your…” She snickers. “Lover?”

She looks at Dinah and forges a smile. “Yeah, she’s just right over there. I’m gonna go get her. Go ahead, get your guy”, Lauren teases, brushing her arm and running over to where Camila is.

She’s gone.

The guy is still sitting there, brushing his chin with his thumb.

“Hey, dude, did you see where she went?”

“Who?”

“Don’t play dumb with me; the girl that was just here. Where did she go?”

He sighs, looking around. “She mentioned something about a guy’s house, that she needed to go to a New Year’s party? I’d say it was a bad trip but she just got the shit; I don’t know what her deal was.”

“What did you give her?”

His eyes dart around again. “LSD.”

“What?”

He raises his hands defensively. “She wanted it.”

“And you let her leave? You-“

She’s already walking away, running out the door to call a cab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The concert scene was ALSO written to "Light of the Morning" by Band of Skulls; I know that's original. But as the chapter starts to take a darker turn, I wrote it to "Glittering Blackness" by Explosions in the Sky.
> 
> Unfortunately, that's just how the story goes.


	9. Chapter 9

She knew that Camila wouldn’t be in Graham’s apartment.

Lauren pounds on the door to the roof access door before she realizes that it’s unlocked. She throws it open, stumbling on her shoes to the loveseat.

There Camila is, arms outstretched. Her heels are kicked off on the ground, the skirt of her black dress flowing around the tops of her thighs. She whips her head around, a huge grin on her face.

“Lauren! It feels good up here, sorry I ditched you.”

“It’s okay.” Lauren steps carefully forward, using her hands to guide her in the dark. When she gets around the bench, she’s instantly horrified.

Camila is standing on the other side of the railing.

It takes everything in her to choke out words. “Hey, you’re missing the party”, she says, as evenly as she can, walking around to where Camila is.

“There are parties everywhere. It’s New Year’s.”

“No, this one is a different party”, Lauren says, tears burning in her eyes. “Only we’re invited.”

“For real?”

“For real”, Lauren promises hoarsely, cold water staining her cheeks. “But we’re gonna be late.”

Camila looks down onto the street below. “I don’t wanna be late.”

“Me neither, that’s why we have to go”, Lauren manages confidently, stepping forward again.

Camila remains fixed on the street. “Hey, do you remember the last time we were here?”

“Of course I do.” _Step._

“And I told you about Miguel, the boy who kissed me the first time?”

“I remember.” _Step._

“You said you wanted to kiss me, so I let you?”

“Yeah.” _Step._

“And we drank all that wine at the fireworks? Do you remember?”

“Every second of it.” _Step._

“I wanna do it again! The wind is so sweet up high, all the news down low, my mom somewhere I don’t know, the party going on; I’m just waiting for the fireworks to start back up again. They smell like sulfur in the snow, like the snow’s on fire…it’s so bright it could be on fire, I just wanna _fly_ , Lauren, I just wanna-“

Lauren reaches under Camila’s arms just as she steps one foot off the edge. Lauren yanks her back as hard as she can, smashing both her own arms and her temple on the sidewalk. 

“Camila!” She screams. “What the _fuck,_ Camila?”

Camila flinches at the noise, her eyes instantly filling up with tears. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t _ever_ fucking do that to me again, don’t you ever fucking do that!”

She’s running her fingers through Camila’s hair, linking her legs over Camila’s, anchoring her to the ground. The blood from the palm of her hands drips onto Camila’s arm, and she’s sobbing. They both are. “Don’t you ever…”

Lauren’s hysterical now, repeating the same thing over and over. Camila cries in confusion and in Lauren’s anger, like a child. 

It’s a long time before either of them can stand again.

+++

Putting Camila to bed was the easy part; she still had no idea what was going on. Lauren locked all the windows and the door from the outside. She trotted to the bathroom, not having stopped crying for what seemed like years. She keeps the door open in case Camila wandered out, and looks at herself in the mirror. 

She’s an absolute mess. Her hair had fallen out of its curls, and her eyeliner was streaked above her eyelids. Dried blood stains the side of her head, and her arms are covered in bruises.

She starts to run the hot water in the sink, peeling her clothes off on the floor. She goes to put her hands under the stream, but they find the mirror glass, in the form of fists. 

Nothing breaks, but she’s splashing water all over her face and arms, not caring about the mess she’s making. She doesn’t even bother drying off; she just flicks the light off and uses a key that she’s never had to use before to unlock the bedroom door. 

Camila sleeps soundly under the covers on the right side of the bed. Lauren shuts the door and locks it behind her, and crawls in, shivering with the cold and the water still everywhere. She slips under the comforter and wraps her arms tightly around Camila’s waist, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck.

_“Please don’t do that to me again.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part, up until Lauren takes her home, was written to "Outro" by M83, and any part after was written to "Lamentations of the Heart" by Philip Wesley, which is another song I dearly love.
> 
> Nobody ever tells you how dangerous it is to begin to explore the world in think. Because once you start to consider things outside of your own life, you feel them too.


	10. Chapter 10

The sound of a piano filters down the hallway, pulling Lauren out of a light sleep. For a split second, Lauren wonders why she’s awake before the sun’s up, and then she sees it.

The door is open and unlocked.

She falls out of bed and sprints down the hallway toward the sound. She’s positive she locked all the windows, so it couldn’t be that disastrous, but she worries all the time now. Her nerves are on fire but she halts in her tracks at the intersection of the hallway and the living area, because there Camila sits, at Lauren’s grand piano by the window. A little nightlight in the kitchen is the only light she has, and even though Lauren can hardly see in the dark, she’s playing something horribly sad.

The song is tragic, like a sonnet in notes. The only connection she has is one of those old literary pieces, like _Faust_ or _Macbeth_. She can hear the loss with every note, and her eyes start to water. She’s heard many people play the piano; hell, she’s heard herself; but nobody’s ever done it like this. This isn’t the first time, but it’s certainly the first she’s ever felt it.

The song is ending, and she wants more. She wants so much more.

She slips around the corner, placing her hands on Camila’s shoulders, rubbing them gently. Camila accentuates the last few notes softly, only rolling back into Lauren’s touch when it’s all over.

“What were you playing?”

Camila sighs softly. “ _Pathetique._ Beethoven.”

“It was beautiful”, Lauren whispers. She clears her throat. “Do you remember anything?”

Camila shakes her head. “No. It’s all blurry. I remember being at the club, and it was cold outside, and we were somewhere else, and then I woke up a little while ago.”

“Oh.”

Camila turns around on the piano bench. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“What did I do?” Camila asks, frightened.

“I don’t think you wanna know.”

“I do!” Camila nearly shouts. She looks guilty for a second, smoothing out the wrinkles in Lauren’s shirt. “I’m sorry. I do.”

Lauren leans her head back, resting on the wall. She looks down at Camila, who’s biting her nails with anxiety. 

“Camz, you tried to jump off a building.”

Camila goes pale. “No…”

Lauren nods, as familiar tears prickle on her eyelids. “You thought there was a New Year’s party, so you went back to Graham’s. I found you standing outside the railing and I grabbed you just before you stepped off onto the street.”

They’re both crying now. Camila grips both of Lauren’s hands, leaning her head against Lauren’s stomach. “I’m so sorry, Lauren. I didn’t mean to.”

Lauren nods, ducking forward to kiss the top of Camila’s head. “I know you didn’t.”

She feels Camila’s hands trailing up and down her thighs, and she wonders for a split second before Camila springs up, kissing her hard against the wall.

She’s desperate and everything’s moving so fast. Lauren pulls away, and Camila’s breathless. 

“What’s going on?” Lauren asks.

“I just…I don’t know-“ She leans in close. Her lips brush against Lauren’s ear.

 _“I want you, Lauren”,_ she whispers.

Lauren swallows, aware of the weakness in her. She doesn’t know how they went from crying to this, but she can’t stand their proximity much longer.

They end up like this: Camila shoving Lauren onto the floor, keeping her tank top on but yanking her shorts off, her underwear with them, kissing her way up the inside of Lauren’s thigh. She can’t think of what possessed Camila to do this now, and she should’ve said no, _she should’ve said no,_ and she almost does, but then Camila scrapes her teeth along Lauren’s hip, and she looks up.

Lauren doesn’t say a word.

Camila isn’t slow. She strokes through just as Lauren throws her head back, neck craning against the carpet. She catches the time on one of the digital clocks. 3:03.

Lauren didn’t realize how much she’d been squirming until Camila links her arms around Lauren’s thighs, holding her to the floor. Camila groans against her more than once, each time, an unholy vibration rocks through her whole body. 

She wants to pace herself, she really does. But she’s biting her fingers to keep herself from waking up everyone else on the third floor, and she gives herself another thirty seconds or so.

She can’t help it. Camila ducks her head forward, hard, and a hoarse sound escapes from the back of her throat, like she’s begging for air. She hears her name, just once, and then there’s an immediate force of sheet glass slipping out onto the streets below and it’s a wild freefall, and she’s splintering into a million pieces. 

No, she doesn’t know how she’s still breathing, but Camila’s hands sliding up her stomach is an effective distraction.

_One of these days._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The part at the piano was obviously written to the song mentioned; "Pathetique" by Beethoven. Every scene after was written to "A Song For Our Fathers" by Explosions in the Sky.
> 
> My love.


	11. Chapter 11

She wakes up with her face against the carpet, and she wonders if these are even her floors, for a split second. And then there’s a girl with her hair tied up, cross-legged on the same floor, sleeved hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, holding it out just for her.

“I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never been seduced by piano”, Lauren says groggily, propped up on her elbow, reaching for the mug.

Camila doesn’t say anything, wearing a wide smile in lieu of pants. 

“What’s the matter?”

Camila snaps out of her daze. “Oh, I just got off the phone.”

Lauren sits up all the way, braving the heat of her drink. She squints her eyes in questioning.

“Well, you were really upset last night, and I felt horrible. I still do. So I called up a place that one of my friends recommended a while back, and I start next week.”

Lauren stares.

“Therapy, Lo. I’m going back to therapy.”

Immediately, Lauren sets her cup aside and throws her arms around Camila’s neck, taking her down to the floor. She cups her face with both her hands and kisses her feverishly, on her forehead, lips, cheek; everywhere. “Camila, I’m so _proud_ of you, sweetheart. This is a really good thing, and I’ll be there for all of it. You know that, right?”

Camila laughs as Lauren pulls herself off of her. “Yes. I…” She eyes the floor. “I did it for you.”

Lauren tips Camila’s head up with the back of her finger, pride welling up in the deepest recesses of her.

“You have a brave heart, Camila.”

Camila’s cheeks glow red. “Well, I had to find someone to make me brave, first.”

+++

She won’t outdo Camila by any means, and those wouldn’t ever be her intentions.

No, she took up playing when Camila leaves for the day sometimes. This afternoon, when she was doing the dishes, Lauren found another CD. Camila burns them all the time, a new one every week it seems, and Lauren listens to them each time she finds one. Today, it was tucked beside the radio, by the cookbooks. 

She never listened beyond the first track. The piano in it was spellbinding, despite the fact that it was a very simple collection of chords, so Lauren learned it in minutes. She listened to it over and over again, figuring out the lyrics too, waiting for Camila to come home.

Home, Camila did arrive come five-something o’clock. Over the sound of her own playing, Lauren didn’t hear her come in, and didn’t notice that she was even there until she heard a stifled cry coming from underneath a pile of winter clothes slumped down the front door.

Lauren looks up in shock from the keys, and the clothes fall silent again. Carefully, Lauren pads across the carpet and sits down next to it, playing with the gloves.

“What happened?”

Camila’s head pokes out from under the hood. “I had my appointment today.” She sniffles.

“And?”

Camila shrugs, her cheeks on fire. “I just remembered why I left in the first place. I can’t stand one question that I can’t answer and it seemed like there were hundreds; I couldn’t stop counting the seconds until I could come back. The doctor seemed so disappointed in me, so much better than me and everyone else that she has her shit together.”

“But I have my shit together. What was different about her?”

Camila laughs through her tears. “You still have a little amount of shit that’s still not there.”

Lauren laughs too, tracing circles on Camila’s wrist with her thumb. “I’m sorry that happened. But if going to therapy is making you worse, please don’t feel like you have to go.”

“I want to do it for you.” She stands, rubbing her eyes. “Will you go back to the piano?”

“Yeah, do you want to be alone?”

Camila shakes her head instantly. “No, I just wanted you to play. I like that song.”

Lauren obliges, moving over to make room for Camila on the bench. 

 

_Last time I saw you, you were on stage_

_Your hair was wild, your eyes were bright and you were in a rage_

_You were swinging your guitar around_

_‘Cause they wanted to hear that sound, but you didn’t want to play_

_And I don’t blame you_

 

There are two kinds of performing in the world.

There’s the kind that everyone knows, the concert. Hundreds or thousands flock through doors, pouring their money to these singers to hear their voices in a different way. And the singers are in awe of the lights, of the audience, and it’s hypnotizing. They’ll try to pour every piece of themselves into the show, and most of them do.

But there’s another kind too, and it’s the show that nobody else attends. It’s the one by themselves, in practice, crying sometimes, singing in broken voices. There are no more lights, there’s just them and the instrument. In this case, it’s two people and a piano and the snow sticking to the window from outside. 

Naturally, Lauren’s heard Camila sing before, and Camila’s heard her play. This one is different, though, because they’ve never been like this. There’s a deep understanding running millions of miles an hour through their blood, the spirit of music, the spirit of winter and the magnitude of the lyrics turning their bones to iron and their hearts to dripping messes in their chests. No, she’s never heard the small shake of Camila’s voice at her favorite part, or the tightening of her fingers, grasping the words and letting them go.

This is a performance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pre-therapy scene was written to "New Morning" by Alpha Rev, and the post was "I Don't Blame You" by Cat Power, which I can warn you now, will make a reappearance.


	12. Chapter 12

There’s only one thing whose hands cannot be gentle. Even Death develops a heavy heart. She is Time, yanking children from their majesties and running them through the years until they have children of their own to pick up where they left off, and the whole thing happens like that.

Lauren likes to think that, in the months following that evening at the piano, Time had a good laugh over them. God knows Lauren scraped her knees trying to crawl back to when Camila enjoyed the sun, and she was safe. They were both safe. But Time, in all her chivalry, picked them both up and dashed into August, dropping things in the snow, the rain, and the weeds on the way. She ignored their howls, only slowing down when her feet got tired.

She would’ve given everything to be back then. She probably would’ve done a hundred more things with that kid, instead of watching her blood turn to mercury and her head into messy paintings on the wall. But there are things that everyone would’ve done instead, had they heeded the warnings of slipping hours.

How can you tell a twenty-five year old to speed up?

Camila fell farther and farther back into the back of her own mind, into pieces of who she was; coming together at times Lauren could never predict. Of course, she was the woman Lauren found on New Year’s, and is still the same person. But there’s a mournful change that Lauren can’t accept, disease and its greedy fingers and craving of the darkness. 

Every time now, when Lauren wakes up to Camila by the window and a giant smile, she takes her out. They’ve gone a lot of places in this short amount of time, and Lauren won’t miss a thing. She likes to think she learned her lesson.

One time, back in June, she came home to Camila sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing the wall, with color pencils strewn everywhere. In front of her was a grand scene of the sunset against the city limits. She wants to say that this was the first time this happened, but it wasn’t, so the next time Camila came back from her appointment, she was presented with a canvas wall of Lauren’s own creation, and was told that on this space, she could draw anything she wanted.

Lauren never asked Camila to move in, and Camila didn’t question it, but it wasn’t ever something that needed asking. Gradually, Camila’s things gravitated to Lauren’s place, the other girls catching on quickly. The canvas wall began a marvelous wave of color starting at the corner, slowly reaching the rest of the paper. It was a work in progress, just like Camila.

She wanted to think Camila was getting better, and she really was. But one time, when Lauren came back from the post office, she swore she saw a high in Camila’s eyes. She interrogated her for hours, but it was Lauren who broke. She was home almost all the time then, keeping an eye on Camila, hellbent on keeping Camila out of being hellbent. 

Camila started to lose weight, and fast. As Lauren was Camila’s emergency contact, she got a call one night, while Camila was asleep.

“Hello, is this Lauren Jauregui?”

“Yeah”, Lauren said, pulling her phone away from her ear to check the number again.

“Hi, this is Jen Lee, Camila’s behavioral health worker.”

_Therapist._

“Miss Cabello recently signed a waiver allowing me to disclose any information pertaining to her safety and emotional health to you, and with this recent permission, I’d like to talk to you about a few things.”

“What’s going on?” Lauren asks, looking down the hall to make sure Camila’s still asleep.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed some changes in her behavior recently, as I have. I ordered some labs for her, for bloodwork, and she still hasn’t gone. I’m not sure she’s still on her medication, however, she’s still showing up for therapy.”

Camila’s voice echoes in the back of her mind. _“I want to do it for you.”_

Lauren smiles for a split second, before her heart goes back to sinking in her chest. 

“Miss…Lee, I’ve been doing everything I can. I’m trying to get her out into some sunlight, I’m home all the time now; I don’t know. I know you’re trying too, but there’s gotta be something else we can do, something we’re not doing now.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Do you have anything planned for this coming weekend?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the beginning of this chapter up until the phone scene to "The World At Large" by Modest Mouse, and everything after was "Look What You've Done" by Jet.
> 
> Vacations are quite healing, I can attest to that.


	13. Chapter 13

“Where are we going?”

“When I tell you, Camila, it loses the majesty.”

Before work overtook the Jauregui’s, holding them hostage to business in Miami, they’d bought a house in the mountains, for fear of Lauren slipping away. They visited once or twice then, but never quite got caught back up to it, and Lauren had a key.

On advice from Lee, Lauren decided to take Camila away for the weekend. With every mile up, the excitement in Lauren’s heart gets a little greater, and her knee shakes. 

The peaks rise up to the sun from the ground, leveling up in a sharp horizon against the setting Friday sun. They look indigo on a cerulean sky, the air gets thinner every now and then, but Lauren’s breathless for a whole other reason.

That sweet spark that sent Camila skating backwards in the first place catches every now and again, and Lauren finds its evidence in the glint in her eyes as she stares out the window. _It’s the air of mystery,_ Lauren thinks. _There are some things you just can’t kill._

“If you took me all the way up here to kill me, that’s low, Lauren.”

Lauren avoids a pothole, fighting a smile. “On the contrary, if I took you all the way up here to kill you, I’d actually be higher.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

+++

_It’s odd, because Lauren’s never been here before._

_The door creaks as it opens, exposing a cold living room with wood floors, a flannel blanket outstretched in front of a stone fireplace, and a wide couch. There’s a mantle for candles, and three different light switches for the front room alone._

_“While I’m in awe of this place’s beauty, I still wonder why they bought it.”_

_Camila helps lug the last of the luggage into the house, effectively moving it all in one trip. Her face lights up in an instant, and Lauren’s eyes quite nearly fill up with tears._

_“What do we do first?”_

_Lauren lets her stare up above, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Dinner?”_

“I’m going to blow the hell up.”

Lauren throws a concerned gaze over her shoulder, carrying their plates to the sink.

“You have stuffed me to the brim. I can no longer function.”

Lauren laughs, running the water over the dishes, rinsing the stains off. She comes back over, looping her arms around Camila’s next from behind, swaying her to the side. “My poor baby.”

Camila feigns sadness. “Your lack of sensitivity hurts me.”

Lauren places a quick kiss on her cheek, sitting adjacent to her at the table. Oh, how Camila smiles, but her eyes look dark and sad.

“What’s been going on, Camz?”

Camila blinks and looks up, running the tip of her forefinger across Lauren’s jaw. “Do you want to talk about it tomorrow? I want to make the rest of this night happy.”

Lauren drags her lips across Camila’s wrist, flicking her eyes up. “What do you propose we do for tonight?”

Camila swallows. “I do need a shower, but I could always take a bath, with candles and wine; and the bathtub has a lot of room, you know, so I could stretch my legs…”

“You’re subtle.”

“I try.”

+++

Anyone Lauren’s ever met who bashes on baths needs a reevaluation, Lauren decides.

Camila had stopped the water a minute ago, so now it’s just the two of them, in silence, up to their chests in hot water, and two glasses of wine occupying the sidetable. Candles flicker on the counter and multiply in the mirror, and in the glassy brown of Camila’s eyes when she leans back to see how Lauren’s doing.

Lauren has also decided that she’s doing quite well.

They’re a couple glasses in apiece. This gives Lauren to consider the substance of everything she sees. This includes the fact that she’s fairly certain that Camila grows more and more beautiful every time Lauren sees her, and that luck swells in her heart that this woman chose to be here, with her, some number of feet above the ground.

“Me too”, Camila breathes, and that’s when Lauren realizes she’s said all of this out loud.

Lauren’s hands find Camila’s skin like they always do, but she wants to get intimate with every part of this first. So, she trails her fingertips up Camila’s body, leaving goosebumps on her trail.

She hasn’t ever been satisfied, in the literal sense of the word, seeing Camila progressively melt into Lauren’s hands. Not that she doesn’t find it wonderful, and a turn-on if there ever was one, but she doesn’t consider herself above Camila, or vise-versa. She just thinks that these are things that they do, and having too much of a dominant mentality leads to a heavy, one-sided emotional demise. Therefore, in this whole process, whenever she sees Camila lose herself a little, in a good way, she cares.

She feels all of her, first. Lauren becomes familiar with the thrum of her heart in her chest, the trembling of her legs, and the fluttering of her eyelashes whenever Lauren dips her hand further down. She slowly rearranges the process, eyes set on a wholly different destination.

Lauren’s fingers run up and down the inside of her thighs and Camila leans back, pressing herself against the middle of Lauren’s legs. She doesn’t say a word, but somehow, Lauren understands her better than ever. 

Lauren laces their fingers together at Camila’s hip under the water, and Camila’s other hand gently guides Lauren in. It’s an instant shakiness, one that Lauren understands as wait. It’s a grand part of self-control, not trying to rush anything, and an inner principle that Lauren abides to. Her hand rocks softly against Camila, and Camila turns her head over her shoulder to catch Lauren in a kiss on her mouth.

Lauren carefully sucks on Camila’s bottom lip; and she tastes like wine. Camila whimpers and faces back toward the front when Lauren dips her head down to kiss the droplets of water off Camila’s neck. Camila grips any surface of Lauren that she can, turning her fingertips white. Lauren focuses on Camila’s breaths as they get more rapid, sharper, almost. 

Camila comes with a shudder against Lauren’s body. The tiny waves in the water of Camila’s movements rise higher on her upper arms, and she kisses Camila’s shoulder a couple times, moving up to find her lips again.

After a whole life of running at the sun, Lauren’s starting to like slowing it down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every part, which the exception of the innocence of the scene in the bathroom, was written to "Six Weeks" by Of Monsters and Men. The scene in question, however, was written to "Slow It Down" by The Lumineers.
> 
> I wrote this which such visualization in my head that now I want to be in the mountains, but all I see when I look out the window are rolling plains. Screw altitude, I'm going flat.


	14. Chapter 14

“Lauren”, Camila whines.

Lauren looks behind, eyeing Camila as she braves the last couple steps up the slope to a spot on the trail, overlooking the mountains. She’s got sweat beading on her chest and her face is twisted in complaint. “Yes, darling?” She inquires, amused, setting the basket down on the rocks.

“You have greatly overestimated how in shape I am. My lungs are crying.”

Lauren gives a sympathetic smile, playing along. “I hope your stomach is too, because I made some bomb-ass sandwiches, with that French bread you like…”

Camila’s frown immediately turns to a satisfied smile.

Lauren lays the blanket from the living room out onto the clearing. She’s grown a fondness for the sunsets here, because the sun’s dipping below the skyline again and it’s breathtaking.

In an embarrassingly short amount of time, the food disappears. Lauren ties her coat under her head as a pillow, and Camila does the same, lying on the ground, their faces nearly touching.

“Hey.”

“Hello.”

Camila snickers.

Lauren’s fingers dance across the fabric, gripping Camila’s with surety. “I know you don’t want to, Camila, and I don’t want to force you, but we’ve got to talk.”

A flash of worry crosses Camila’s eyes, and Lauren thinks she’s forgotten. “About what?”

Lauren brushes her thumb against the back of Camila’s hand. “About what’s been going on lately.”

Camila bites her lip.

“I don’t want you to think I invaded your privacy, and I’m sorry if you think I have. Jen called me earlier this week, and, well, she’s worried.”

“I’m fine, really.” A very tired smile lines the gray area of Camila’s face, reserved for falsified happiness.

Lauren squeezes her hand. “You’ve been getting really small, Camila. You got winded coming up a quarter of a mile. This past day is the first time in weeks I’ve seen you genuinely happy. I think there’s a part of you that’s okay, but there’s another part, and that other part is really hurting.”

Camila can’t even find the words to stutter over. 

“And if it’s okay, I want to hear about it.”

Camila’s cheeks burn. “I- you don’t want to know.”

Lauren lays her hand on Camila’s arm. “Nothing you will ever say will drive me away from you, unless you tell me that you want me to go. I can swear that.”

“I really don’t know how to say it, and I’m afraid of what happens after, but you really do deserve an explanation, and I’m sorry, I’m _so, so_ sorry…”

Camila’s crying softly now, and Lauren’s heart shrinks in fear. She can’t do anything except hold the girl; because she’s never been aware of how beautiful their time together has been until now.

“Lauren, I’ve been using.”

Lauren’s blood jumps in a standstill. Her voice is monotone with shock, and she’s trying to keep a rational head. “What have you been using?”

Camila’s getting hysterical. “LSD mostly, and I’ve done cocaine a few times. Lauren, I’m sorry; I’m so fucking sorry.” She stands up, pacing back and forth on the rocks, pulling at her hair. “I’m so sorry; I’m so fucking sorry. I’m sorry, I’m _sorry-_ “

“Camila, Camila.” Lauren jumps up, throwing her arms around Camila’s waist. Camila’s tries to wrench free and push back; to shove Lauren away, but Lauren’s grip is iron. But Lauren’s heart hasn’t ached as hard as when Camila succumbs to it, wrapping her arms around Lauren’s sides, sobbing violently into Lauren’s chest. They’re down on the ground again, Lauren lying against the rocks, instantly able to ignore the stabbing pain in her back. The front of Lauren’s sweatshirt is soaked with the heaviness of Camila’s tears; with her own to join when Camila stops muttering her apologies and replaces them with the awful sounds of her sorrow. 

“Sweet girl”, Lauren chokes out, holding Camila’s head to her chest. “I just want to help you. I just want you to be okay. You know that right?” Lauren asks, her voice getting higher and more desperate. “You know that? I want you to be alright, because, let me tell you something; I love you.”

Camila quiets, pulling off of Lauren’s body, using her hands to prop herself up off the rocks.

“I love you, Camila. And my heart breaks a little more every time I see you like this, because I want you to be happy and love the world you live in. I want that spark in you to spread like wildfire. You have the potential to go out and make everyone around you better, because God knows, you made me better.”

Camila blinks a couple swollen eyes, and then reaches up, using the tip of her thumb to brush a tear of Lauren’s away.

“Lauren, I love you. And I don’t know how I got so lucky; I swear I don’t. I want to stop hurting you so much, because you make me better too. It’s not worth the fucking high to see you heartbroken, it really isn’t.”

A sob branches out from the deepest part of Lauren’s chest, one that draws Camila back in to lie on the blanket, limbs entangled. The sun has died and is replaced by millions of stars, kissing Camila’s quivering jawbone. So Lauren makes a vow, to spend some hours up here with Camila, crying a little longer, falling asleep to the unknown, comforting magnetism of night slipping farther down to touch the mountains, reaching down to touch her soul too. 

Oh, she loves Camila, more than any star in this sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recommend "Never Ending" by Rihanna for this chapter, which is another slow one as well. 
> 
> Keep in mind, I did not write this with the intention of taking every part of either Lauren or Camila and putting them in a different situation, because even though there are things about them that we can see, just like everyone else, there are parts of them that we don't know about.
> 
> These things are their deepest thoughts, things they cry to at night that no one else knows. They are songs that they've never let anyone know they've heard, journal-entries, and how the sun looks to each of them. Therefore, in the absence of these things, I guessed my own. My only hope is that they hold true to the plot I made.


	15. Chapter 15

_Her fingers found the keys again, half mimicking a song she already knew, half composing. The dusty sky of a Seattle evening obscures the sunset into a gray blanket with spaces of light filtering through._

_She wants to say these next couple weeks passed by incident-free, and they had, but a phone call that evening would change her mind._

_“Hello, this is Linda Krandall from Archie McPhee in Seattle, is this-“ she pauses, “Lauren Jauregui?”_

_“Yeah”, Lauren says hoarsely, having a feeling she knew who this concerned._

_“We were given this number by a young woman who visited this store today, and there’s been an incident.”_

_Lauren throws her jacket over her shoulder, putting the woman on speaker so she could look up the address on her phone. “What did she do?”_

_Linda seems taken aback. “Um…if you’ll just come down to 45th Street, we can discuss it further…”_

That’s why Lauren’s standing in the middle of a toyshop, gag gifts and dolls lining the shelves and piñatas hanging from the ceiling. 

Camila’s there, sitting on a tiny bench in the back by the bathrooms. Her knees are drawn up to her chest and she looks guilty, her cheeks a rosy red and her teeth clenched. Her hair falls over her face, so much so that Lauren can’t even see the top half.

Lauren kneels down, putting her hands on Camila’s knees. “Camz”, she asks lowly. “What did you do?”

Camila’s silent.

“She just caused a…um, a disturbance, which really didn’t constitute law enforcement at the degree, I just had a feeling I should call someone close to her, due to some things that were said…”

Lauren cranes her head up, and Linda motions for them to step aside, unlocking a back room. Lauren looks into Camila’s eyes the best she could, but is met with a strands of brown hair hanging over them. “Stay here.”

Lauren stands up and nods, sighing, and following Linda to the room.

Linda shuts the door behind them, leaning against it. “Sweetheart, I’ve been alive for fifty-three years, and I’ve been doing this for thirty of them. All of the people who’ve come through here, the things that some of them have done; I’ve never seen anything like this.”

The blood drains from Lauren’s face.

“She came in, and she was just quiet. It was fine and then she started ranting about something I couldn’t understand until she was screaming. I thought about calling the police but then she started scratching all down her face, and I realized she was speaking Spanish. That’s when I thought that she didn’t need other people yelling at her, that she needs something else, so I calmed her down and got your number from her. She hasn’t said a word since I told her you were coming.”

Lauren can’t process anything.

“I don’t want to step in and intervene in anyone’s life, but that girl needs some help, ma’am.”

“Yeah, she-“ Lauren’s voice catches, and she shakes her head. “She’s been trying really hard to get herself better but it’s a work in progress, she really is trying though…”

Linda’s face softens in sympathy. “I believe it. Take her home; get her some sleep. The shop’s closing in a little while, anyway.”

Lauren makes a feeble attempt to smile in gratitude. “I will, and thank you.”

+++

Lauren doesn’t try to make her talk the whole way home.

It’s only when she’s running the sink, and Camila’s sitting on the counter, when she says anything at all.

“What happened back there?”

Lauren brushes the hair back from her eyes, stifling a gasp as she wets the hand towel.

Camila’s eyes are swelled up from the nail marks raking down them, and dried blood coats her eyelids. She’s got a bruise next to her nose and she won’t look up at all, and hardly flinches when Lauren dabs away at her blood with the towel. 

“You weren’t high, were you?”

Camila finally looks at her, her lip trembling. “No, fuck, I haven’t touched anything since we went on vacation.”

“I didn’t think so, I just…” Lauren’s voice trails off. “Can you please tell me what happened?”

“No, I already feel insane enough.”

Lauren sighs gently, relaxing her shoulders. “You’re not crazy, I hope you know that.”

Camila shrugs, blocking every emotion whatsoever as Lauren cleans up her face with hot water. “You know, I grew up in Miami. We both did.”

Lauren nods.

“We didn’t have a lot. We stopped getting Christmas presents; my parents were at work all the time, and I’d walk blocks and blocks to get home because everyone on that school bus was so horrible until I graduated.

I walked past a shop like that every day. And every day, there was a doll sitting on a table in the front window. They’d dress her up sometimes around the holidays, and I wanted her so _bad_. I asked once, and Mami said we couldn’t afford her, every day for years; I’d see her and want her a little more. I wanted to dress her up, put that little Christmas bow in her hair, you know. I even tried to get a job, but no one was hiring. 

I tried to hate that thing, and one day, I succeeded. I never stopped wanting it, I don’t think, but I’d get so angry just looking at that _doll_ , thinking how we couldn’t afford it, so how great could she really be? 

I saw that store today, and I went in, for the hell of it. And wouldn’t you know? There was that doll again, obviously a different one of the same brand, but there it was. And something in me just snapped, Lauren, because all I could think about were those years in Miami, walking home, and seeing it in the window.” 

_“Mami, ¿por qué no podemos disponer de ella? No hay realmente ningún dinero? Puedo probar a trabajar? Por favor. Ella es tan hermosa...”_

_[“Mami, why can’t we afford it? Is there really no money? Can I try to work? Please. She’s so beautiful…”]_

Camila cries a little. “ Ella es tan hermosa...”

Lauren’s heart cracks again as she pulls Camila to her chest. 

“Camila, te amo. Te amo con todo el mundo. Lo siento, y me gustaría conseguir nada. ¿Entiende usted? Sólo quiero que usted se sienta bien.”

[“Camila, I love you. I love you with the whole world. I’m sorry, and I would get you anything. Do you understand? I just want you to be alright.”]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the scenes until when Lauren takes Camila home again, I used "Atlas" by Coldplay. After that, I listened to "The Courage Or The Fall" by Civil Twilight.
> 
> I tried not to let the festering feeling of growing up knowing there isn't as much as you'd like shine through, but I suppose you understand others through experience.
> 
> I knew this would help someday.


	16. Chapter 16

After these past few months, after a weekly exponential amount of things gravitating to Lauren’s place, there were still things at her old apartment with the girls. Though the decision for Camila to move in wasn’t official, it might as well have been. So the next night, Lauren finds her nine o’clock on the third of September spent at a familiar kitchen table. 

In the process of moving the rest of her stuff, Camila had fallen asleep on her bedroom floor. Normani tucked her into bed and joined Lauren, Ally, and Dinah back at the table.

Lauren sinks back into the rickety wood chair, with three pairs of questioning eyes on her.

Ally is the first to speak. “What’s been going on? You’ve got to be honest with us.”

“We miss you, Lauren”, Normani adds.

Dinah’s quiet, wearing a saddened look of concern.

Lauren leans forward, twisting her fingers around. “She hasn’t been feeling well.”

“How so?” Ally asks, eyes softened.

Lauren swipes her tongue over her bottom lip. “She’s been sick, and she’s really trying, you know? It’s just been hard because there’s more things than ever happening now, and the more effort she puts in, the worse she gets. She hardly has any good days anymore, and shows take everything out of her, and I’m scared as hell.” Lauren bites the inside of her cheek. “And I’m so sorry you guys have been in the dark about all of this. I didn’t want to keep any secrets, but the wider her support system is, the better, and-“ Lauren stops herself. 

She’s always been quite talented in telling when she’ll start crying, and if she talks about it for too much longer, she’ll lose it.

The girls are silent.

Something inside of Lauren breaks, and she pushes the chair back.

“You know, I’ll be right back, I’m gonna go take a walk.”

She’s halfway out the door when she hears Ally begin. “Lauren, wait…”

She shuts the door anyway.

+++

The wind blowing between the buildings makes the city naturally colder, and she doesn’t even know where she’s going. She’s just got two feet, and they’re carrying her to a place she isn’t aware of, and the autumn cool blows her hair around her face as she walks. Runs. She’s running now, turning the businesses into streaks of color swimming behind her. Her boots are heavy on the sidewalk, and she takes off until the spaces between them shrink into the home district.

She knows she’s driven by these houses before, but she’s hardly looked at them. It isn’t until her feet carry her up a flight of broken concrete steps that she realizes where she’s ended up.

The First Church glows from one bulb on the left side of the doorframe. She shoves against it, but it’s locked. She pushes again, and again, and again, until she kicks in frustration. She sinks down in anger, crying hot tears, yelling at God in her mind for locking his doors.

She jumps at the sensation of a draft behind her, and she looks up, finding an older man in slacks and a black shirt tucked in, hair behind his ears. “Sister?”

Lauren rubs her eyes, face burning. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m Thomas, hello”, he introduces, holding his hand out, helping her to her feet. 

“I’m Lauren.”

“Hi, Lauren”, he says kindly.

+++

It’s been a long time since she’s been in a church.

She remembers attending Christmas and Easter services for the spirit of it, and the mild fear of punishment, but beyond moving to Washington she hasn’t gone again. 

Small candles flicker by the altar, leaving the back of the church in darkness, where she is. In the absence of light, the stained-glass windows look colorless, and a benevolent statue of Mary holds her hands out, inviting her in.

The man doesn’t say much, and she doesn’t either. There’s an air of brokenness that neither one of them are equipped to deal with, so the wind outside is the only sound whistling through the sanctuary. He just stares at her, waiting, and she stares at Mary.

 _Hello,_ Mary seems to say. _What brought you here?_

_-I don’t know._

_There’s a reason for everything. You know, every soul finds me like this._

_-I can’t imagine I’m the first one to ever look at you._

_Not in actuality, you find me like this. Small, crying._

_-Mother Mary of Sweet Positivity._

_As lost as I thought._

Thomas has long since excused himself, and Lauren doesn’t find it odd or insulting that he hasn’t tried to talk to her. It just makes sense: her being here, his being here, all of this. 

A warm body slips into the next seat, and Lauren turns up to face it.

Dinah.

“How’d you find me?”

Dinah leans back, tracing Lauren’s veins with her fingernail. “I followed you.”

“I think you’re creepy and weird.”

“I know. And I think you have some talking to do.”

So that’s how Lauren tells her everything, from the New Year’s party, Washington Park, the rooftop, Beethoven, the mountains, Camila’s drug use, to yesterday’s episode at the toy store. She’s crying hard by the end of it, in one of those rare occasions where she allows her friend to see her sadness. She tries to shrug it off, but Dinah pulls her close, and it’s a warm comfort she’d missed from this girl for a while now.

“You know you’re giving it everything you have”, Dinah states, running her fingers through Lauren’s hair.

“Am I?” Lauren wonders out loud. “Or am I just making it worse?”

Dinah sighs. “You slowed down this whole process by being there. This was going to happen sooner or later, and I wouldn’t lie to you. She’s so lucky to have you. Think of where she’d be now if she didn’t? A whole lot worse, or half of who she is now. There’s some kind of love you give her that the rest of us can’t, because you’re in love with her, and she’s in love with you too. Don’t ever question how much better you made her, because you might as well have saved her life.”

A strangled cry escapes her throat, and Dinah guides her gently down until Lauren’s laying her head on her lap. “This thing is out for blood…”

Dinah strokes her cheek. “I know.”

_You had it in you that whole time, you know._

_-Mother Mary of Sweet Positivity._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the beginning of this chapter to "Human" by Civil Twilight, and the rest to "Hallelujah" by Rufus Wainwright, because it's a song I've cried to since I was a child.
> 
> I resonate well with not knowing if you should trust people or things with pieces of your soul but, I suppose fictionality is no better time to begin experimenting with it.


	17. Chapter 17

One week and a show later, Camila comes home smiling. 

“Two things”, she begins. “One, I figured out I can write better than I thought and two, I picked up a job application at the library.”

“Camila!” Lauren squeals. “Camila I’m so _proud_ of you! I’m so proud!” She’s got her arms around Camila, jumping up and down. Camila laughs, and it has the sweet ache of something genuine. “Ooh, we have to celebrate!”

Camila pauses, smirking. 

Lauren smacks her with a dishtowel. “Get your mind out of the gutter. You’re gonna explain that writing thing further and I’m making a cake.”

“Yay!” Camila shouts, sashaying her hips to the kitchen. “What kind?”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll make vanilla, and I’ll load your half up with bananas.”

“Why not yours?”

Lauren winks at Camila as she goes to the fridge to get out the eggs. “Because I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life.”

Some time later, when the cake has eight minutes left, Lauren comes up behind Camila at the table. “So, you’re writing?”

Camila looks up, sparkling. “Yeah.”

“I can write too; listen to this.”

Lauren clears her throat, picking up a notebook she’d left on the top of the piano, pretending to read from it. “Roses are red, I’m in debt to TJ Maxx’s; my soul is crumbling apart, taxes taxes taxes.”

Camila fakes wiping away a tear. “I’ve never read something so thought-provoking.”

Lauren bows. “I do have that talent. Now, let’s hear from you.”

“I bet you can write for real.”

Lauren shakes her head furiously. 

Camila tugs her arm down to bring her to the table. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll show you something from here”, she says, showing Lauren a little black book, “if you show me something from you.”

“I just did.”

Camila glares playfully. “No, something you really wrote.”

“I did write that.”

“Fine.” Camila turns away from her, legs on opposite sides of the chair, facing the window. “Now you’ll never know my grand mystique.”

“Do you really want to?”

“Yes.”

“You asked for it”, Lauren says, flipping open to a page in the middle of the notebook, words scrawled all over it.

“ –At seven or so:

It would hurt my eyes to see the sun  
And I’d blink away  
And cry the dust  
Of a sullen holiday

-At seven or so:

Magnetic night  
Yanks me to my grave  
A cynosure of a marvelous fight;  
Delight, destroy, deprave

-At seven or so:

I sink below  
A cellophane ocean  
As the tiniest minnow  
In a celebrity motion

-At seven or so:

I swing from the ceiling  
Sucking pink from roses as an aphid  
And spit away all meaning:  
A disposition among the orchids.”

Camila turns back around. 

“Well fuck, Lauren, how am I supposed to compete with that?”

“Everyone writes in their own way. We don’t walk the same speed through the universe, do we? Anything you say to me will be just as beautiful, if not more, because it belongs to you.”

Camila grins, flipping open the first page.

“How he takes the life out of me?  
Yes, I writhe on the floor  
Draining, quite nearly  
As his friends take him to another town  
My soldier would say  
“How far do you want this?”  
“At the ivy gate”, says Fantine to God, “I’ll go that far.”

How he’s quick with abandon?  
Yes, I stare at the wall  
Breathing, quite nearly  
As his business runs him to Paris  
My husband would say  
“How far do you want this?”  
“At the ivy gate”, says Edna to the static waves, “I’ll go that far.”

How he could taste ambition?  
Yes, I crawl down the dirt  
Surrendering, quite nearly  
As the devil takes him on his shoulders  
And anyone who could never understand says  
“How far do you want this?”  
“To the sun, to the stars, to the gravity holding me to the ground,  
To the divide at the ivy gate”, says Gretchen to Mother Mary,  
“I’ll go that far.”

 _“Les Mis, The Awakening,_ and _Faust”_ , Lauren murmurs, running her hand up Camila’s arm. “That was beautiful.”

Camila blushes. “I still liked yours better.”

The oven timer rings shrilly against Lauren’s pursuit, and she groans.

Camila pushes her chair back, putting on oven mitts. “I’ve never heard anyone that disappointed about cake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! For the job scene, I used "Submarines" by The Lumineers. For the rest, I wrote it to "Jezebel" by Iron & Wine.


	18. Chapter 18

It came after a three in the morning conversation with Camila, sheets strangling her at the waist.

When they talked about family, of all things, and the bed was painted indigo. _My parents and my sister are probably back in Mexico,_ Camila whispers dreamily, and Lauren finds it sad that she doesn’t know.

Lauren tells her about the Jauregui’s ever-growing apartment in Miami, her father’s black tie affairs that caused him to get tired of champagne and that made her mother neglect to wear pearls anymore unless she was going. _Some connections don’t stick all this time._

When she looked over and saw Camila counting the cracks on the wall, that’s when she thought it for the first time, and then it was so overwhelming that she swallowed it again.

On the nightstand next to her lay a pair of fingernail clippers, because Camila retook up the habit of running her nails down over her eyes. She looked like a hollow child, swinging her feet over the bathroom counter while Lauren kneels in front of her, cutting them all off. 

_I don’t know what’s gonna happen to her._

+++

It came again in November. Lauren applied for a job right across the street from the library as a very part-time waitress and got it. She came home in a black polo and tight jeans to find Camila there again, on the floor of the art room, red and green and blue paint splashed all over her legs with bruises and newspapers on the floor. There was a black sheet over what must’ve been her handiwork. 

Lauren dropped her bag at the door and walked carefully over.

“Don’t ask; it’s a surprise.”

Lauren nods, her fingers running over the dark pools of blue on Camila’s upper arms. “What did you do?”

Camila tosses her hair over her shoulder, fluttering her eyelashes over huge pupils getting wider by the second. “Nothing, just drawing.”

Lauren tips up Camila’s chin with her fingers. “Fuck it all to hell.”

“What?”

Lauren gets back up on her feet, taking Camila up with her to the bathroom. “You’re high.”

Camila trips behind after her. “No I’m not.”

Lauren slams her fist on the wall of the bathtub, soothed by the running hot water. “Don’t do that to me.”

“Do what?”

“Do _that_ ”, Lauren sighs, a down kind of anger fueling the part of her head that lights up with sadness. “Lie to me, and try so hard to kill yourself with this shit. You have people now, you know? And I’m three blocks away, you know that too? I’m three blocks away and I’m at work thinking everything’s okay while you’re putting that shit in you. I’m this close to quitting.”

Nobody says anything else for the rest of the time, with Lauren turning her back on the paint-covered girl stomach-deep in murky blue bath water, so high she has to think about what her own name is.

_I don’t know what’s gonna happen to her._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May I begin only a brief explanation; that the length of this chapter and the chapter itself is only to convey the switching of mentalities that happens and plagues the person in question.
> 
> I wrote this whole thing to "From Afar" by Vance Joy, which strikes a personal chord with me every time I listen to it.


	19. Chapter 19

_She put on a great show for the girls, as they put on a show for everyone else._

_And for an hour or so, everyone got to pretend that the pretty girl on the acoustic guitar plucking the strings wasn’t getting plucked from the last drops of gravity holding her to sanity._

_Oh, how this flesh-eating audience in Seattle night loved to think their lives were all gold._

_She performs the ballads as if she’s confessing all the things she’s seen, like the notebooks in the back dresser drawer in the art room after Camila sleeps off last week’s high. They were covered, every possible inch, cover to cover with incessant mathematical ramblings; sequences totaling to distances past the sun, dimensions building off the other and the evolution of the human psyche and emotional capacity, spiraling out as the rest of existence does, into a ‘non-lateral state of being’, Camila wrote in wild cursive. ’There is an explanation for our progression into the world; forty-six and two; allowing us to unify and work for our continuing survival as a species’._

_So when she used to sing the quiet ones, she’d whisper with her eyes, forty-six and two. Who will we become? And then she’d look over and see the fake glint in Camila’s eyes conveying the illusion that she’s still all there. For that small slot of time, she’d believe it, too._

_Concert by concert slipped through the dates on the calendar, and Lauren actually started to look forward to them again._

_This dream tastes beautiful on every other Saturday._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this rather brief chapter to Snake Eyes by Mumford & Sons, the live version.
> 
> This very heavily emulated a piece of writing that's stuck with me through the years:
>
>> _"I ate it all; plastic, diamonds and sugar-coated arsenic as we danced in honey and sea-salt sprinkled laxative. Coral blossomed portraits in Rembrandt light; cheekbones high and fashionable. Snap! goes the moment; a photograph is time travel, like the light of dead stars painting us with their warm, titanic blood. Parasitic kaleidoscopes and psychotropic glow worms stop me dead in my tracks. Aphids sucking the red off a rose, but for beauty I will gladly feed my life into the mouths of rainbows; their technicolor teeth cutting prisms and smiling benevolently on the pallid hue of the working class hero."_
> 
> Though this does not represent any piece of the story at all, its style and content has heavily influenced me in many areas of my life. Things aren't always as they appear to be. 


	20. Chapter 20

One afternoon, when Camila’s in the second part of her double shift, she shows up at the girls’ apartment.

They received her like a Grammy. They gushed and gushed over her absence, in the emotional sense, from this place, wearing smiles the best they could. They made her an early dinner, drank a little with her, and talked the hell out of her too.

They had a way of getting her to confess, too.

Lauren wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t, anymore, after reciting everything in the mirror and coming to terms with the fact that the traditional idea of a stubborn and quiet love that she’d sown over the years was nonexistent. It called for a lot of blocks to the inside of her heart and her head too, to keep her from spilling too much.

She kept quiet about the drugs, but somewhere, Lauren thinks they know. The sympathetic flicker of those already abandoning the twelve steps for people who they know will never recover solely from them moves quietly through their eyes. And then a sinister thing rises up from their circle, touching each of them on the shoulder in realization.

She knows they feel it too: _I don’t know what’s gonna happen to her._

The room goes quiet for a minute. And then they all shift forward; Normani’s hand finding Lauren’s knee, and the empathy of Ally and Dinah, who she already was aware knew it all already, radiated off from their soft hearts and slowed everything down for a minute.

It’s Ally who breaks the silence. “We’re gonna do everything we can. Any one of us will drop everything to come to the both of you, you know that, right? Take however much time you need but we’ll always be here to listen. I have full faith that you can get through this, but that doesn’t mean we won’t help.”

Normani tightens her fingers on Lauren’s leg. “We love you, Lauren, and Camila.”

Lauren uncrosses her arms, allowing the bit of her old heart to be happy for a minute. “We couldn’t have done this, or continue to do this, without you guys. I love you so much, and I’m so lucky. I hope you guys know that; we’re so lucky.”

+++

Lauren recognizes the tears in Camila’s eyes instantly.

They’re the ones she hasn’t cried in a long time, tears of happiness. She smiles up at Lauren from the couch, still in her khakis from the library. “You’ll never believe this.”

Lauren runs over, sliding up next to her on the cushions, in awe of her radiating joy. “What is it?”

Camila holds up a newspaper clipping with a picture of a smiling girl on it, clutching a ribbon in her hand.

Lauren runs her thumb over it, and she could’ve sworn she’s seen that smile before. “She kind of looks like you.”

Camila turns it back toward her. “She does, doesn’t she?”

“Who is it?”

Camila puts the clipping back in her hands, waiting for Lauren to finish reading.

_Sofia Cabello, eleven, smiles after winning her school’s talent competition with her incredible performance of “Vienna”, by Billy Joel. She has participated in the junior high choir since the sixth grade, and shows immense promise to the community and surrounding areas, which are looking forward to the next display of her talents._

Lauren looks up, eyes widening. “Is this your sister?”

Camila nods, eyes filling up again. “Sofi. I haven’t seen her since she was in kindergarten. My aunt sent this to me and said she thought I might like to see this.”

Lauren puts the article safely back into the envelope it came in. “She’s beautiful and obviously very talented, just like you. She’ll go far.”

Camila’s cheeks blush with gratitude. “I want to do something.”

“What is it?”

Camila cranes her head up to look at the clock. “Perfect. Put on that one dress of yours.”

Lauren puts a hand over her heart. “Auditioning for _Project Runway?_ How did you know?”

Camila shakes her head, slapping Lauren lightly on the knee. “Ha, no. It’s a surprise.”

+++

Lauren feels the silver chain in her pocket over and over again with her thumb. She doesn’t consider herself a flighty person, by any means, but her nerves are shooting up into her throat. 

She’s kept this promise to Camila, that she wouldn’t open her eyes under any circumstances, lest Camila accidentally left the country. She feels the bumps of familiar roads under the car, and luckily, they’re only in there for a few minutes.

“We’re here!”

Lauren takes her hand off from in front of her eyes, and sees Washington Park, looking beautiful as ever as the autumn leaves take turns sinking back into the earth. She grins, buttoning the top couple buttons on a burgundy coat over the black dress Camila insisted upon her wearing.

Camila refused to let Lauren help her carry anything. She totes the basket from the mountains, and a reusable shopping bag with a couple bottles of wine clanking together.

Lauren knows immediately where they’re going, but lets Camila guide her anyway. Naturally, their part of the park is empty, their single bench illuminated by a faulty streetlight by the stream.

They don’t say much while they eat, and it’s a recurring joke between the two of them that they’re silent because stuffing down food requires every breath. This is why, every ten seconds or so, they crack up with their mouth full of sandwich.

The wine gets opened, and Lauren’s lucky Camila had remembered to bring glasses. She brings it up to her lips, lipstick staining the top of the glass, smiling at both the beauty before her and the steady return of their initial magic together.

They laugh together until the minutes blend into simply the space they occupy. Camila had just got done with an anecdote that involved her somehow locking herself in the downstairs laundry room of her old apartment, almost completely naked, rendering her completely unable to bang on the window for help until her clothes came out of the wash.

Lauren’s laughing so hard that she almost forgot her present. While Camila’s looking away, she fumbles at the chain for the last time, feeling each crevice in it as she slips the necklace into Camila’s hand.

Camila jerks her head back, stopping her breath. “Lauren…”

Lauren smiles, taking it back and moving Camila’s hair off her shoulders. She fastens it and turns her back around. “It’s a tesseract. I know you love math, and this one symbolizes a lot. I’m assuming your familiar with Euclidean space?”

Camila nods, and it was a question Lauren already knew the answer to.

“The tesseract resembles the ‘fourth dimension’. In general geometry, three spatial dimensions are required, like length and with and height, and time, the temporal dimension. Anyone can exist, Camila, it’s easy. But the temporal dimension allows a figure to span across space in time. They used to think that motion was independent of everything, but it’s not. Everything takes time. If not, nothing is complete. Like this, Camz, this whole thing is a work in progress. It’ll all work out, because this, like everything else, takes time. And I’m willing to spend everything I can to work through it with you.”

Camila looks up from the necklace and into Lauren’s eyes, staring. 

Everyone who’s ever said that brown eyes are simple hasn’t looked into them like Lauren is now. Camila’s eyes are obviously brown, but in them are flecks of shades much darker, hope glimmering through them. They’ve never taken into account the way the sun looks in them, all brilliant in a mild canvas. Tonight, especially, the streetlights shoot tiny stars that span across everything Lauren sees. Maybe those people couldn’t see the beauty because brown eyes remind them of heartbreak, but Lauren’s romanticized the hell out of these, and nothing has ever seemed so beautiful.

Camila’s mouth tastes like merlot, and her skin is cold from the autumn wind. Lauren tangles them together, fingers running through her hair. It’s just then when everything fits into place: their position in the galaxy, all of these numbers tallying their living, and the way it feels to have Camila situated perfectly in her arms. 

Camila pulls away, ducking her head down to lean against Lauren’s chest.

“I love you.”

Lauren smiles, resting her chin on the top of Camila’s head. A leaf skitters across the sidewalk, and when Lauren lets that and every other thing run far away, she whispers into Camila’s ear. 

“I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the beginning and the newspaper scene to "The Boxer" by Jerry Douglas, Mumford & Sons, and Paul Simon. Date night belonged to "To Make You Feel My Love" by Adele. 
> 
> This whole thing almost made me forget how soon I was ready to break everything apart.


	21. Chapter 21

A week after the last evidence of life falls from the trees, snow litters the streets of Seattle.

Dinah, Ally, and Normani had all come back the week before Christmas from visiting their families, and invited Lauren and Camila to stay the night Christmas Eve. They’d accepted without a second thought, trailing happily through the snow to come see their friends.

It seemed like nothing bad had happened at all. They were kids again, all too delighted when Ally pulled five pairs of matching Christmas pajamas from the closet. Normani made an old recipe she knew, white chocolate mochas with peppermint, and Ally, sugar cookies. An old record player of Dinah’s sat on the kitchen table, playing Sinatra, but it might as well have been silent over the laughter of the five of them.

They’re playing a holiday version of Heads Up, and failing, miserably.

Dinah’s up now, quite frustrated as a candy cane. “Come on guys, what am I? You suck at this.”

Normani bends the upper half of her body.

“Penguin?”

Ally shakes her head, making chopping motions down her body, indicating the stripes.

“Jack the Ripper?”

Normani makes a face. “No, dumbass, what does Jack the Ripper have anything to do with the holidays?”

“Somebody could’ve gotten killed at wintertime”, Dinah points out, as Lauren desperately tries to act it out.

The timer runs out, and when Dinah sees that it was a candy cane, the person closes to her gets the violence. In this case, it’s Normani.

A couple hours later, after everyone’s crashed from the sugar, Lauren and Camila are sleeping together on the couch, wide awake.

Camila plays with the fabric of Lauren’s pajama pants. “Lauren?”

“Hmm?” Lauren hums, making a little braid in Camila’s hair.

“This is our first Christmas.”

“Yeah?” Lauren says, undoing the braid and pulling her closer.

“Yeah. And we’re…” Camila snickers, _“together”._

“Are you five?” Lauren laughs into the back of Camila’s neck.

“Yes”, Camila says, sleepily.

Lauren holds her as she falls asleep, watching the clock hit midnight.

_“Merry Christmas, sweet girl.”_

+++

Camila’s _felt_ better.

She’s come home giggling for the past couple weeks, and Lauren’s found herself able to breathe again. They’re exactly as they were when all this started, too gleeful to take down the Christmas decorations, singing duets despite Lauren’s neighbors. Even the air has tasted sweeter, and she finds everything at ease, coming into place, the hours together spanning miles as opposed to sixty minutes apiece. Camila comes back smiling after her therapy appointments, gushing about how Jen thinks she’s doing just remarkable. Thanking a God she’d put off for a while, she flusters with happiness. _It’s astounding how these things work out._

And then came December 27th.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Christmas Lights" - Coldplay


	22. Chapter 22

Maybe Lauren shouldn’t have trusted her.

Oh, she knows she shouldn’t have trusted her.

She’s sitting on the living room floor, with a cup of tea sitting on her notebook and her laptop opened in front of her. She’s been writing ever since Camila opened the creative recesses in her.

The clock has just hit nine, something Lauren doesn’t notice until the front door opens and then slams again.

Camila leans back against the wall, staring off into space, scratching up and down against the sleeves of her sweater. Her legs shake and she’s mumbling something over and over again, and an aching fear sweeps over her head.

She runs over. She clenches her hands to keep them from trembling when she smells the kind of smoke that doesn’t come from cigarettes staining Camila’s coat. _Oh, God._

She shakes Camila by the shoulders. “Camz, look at me, Camila…please, sweetheart, look at me…”

“I burned it.”

Camila puts her hand over her mouth.

“You…what?”

She bites her fingers. “I burned it down, Lauren. I burned it to the ground. Oh, I think it’s all gone now.”

Lauren brushes the hair back from Camila’s eyes desperately, prying her fingers away from her mouth and setting them on her hip. “Camila”, she says, trying to level her voice. “What did you burn?”

Camila rocks back and forth on her feet, eyes darting all over the space above Lauren’s head. “I burned it, the toy store.”

Lauren freezes. 

“What are you talking about?”

Camila grips at Lauren’s hip through her jeans. “I don’t know…I don’t know, at first I’m just walking down the street, and then, there it is, I’m looking at it and the next thing I know, it’s all on fire and I’m holding a lighter, and a gas can is on the ground next to me, I don’t know where I got it, and the fire’s so bright it’s burning my eyes, and I pick it all up and I run. I ran so far until I got here, oh my God, the police are gonna come…” Frightened tears glitter in her eyes. “The police are gonna come and I’m gonna get arrested, I’m going to _jail_ Lauren, I’m going to jail, they’ll find me…” And then she shrieks and falls forward, landing against Lauren’s body.

Lauren’s too shocked to say anything, she just feels her fingers in someone’s hair and that someone’s tears falling hot on her neck. She holds them as tight as she can, forgetting without even trying the things that just happened.

“We’ll run away”, she finds herself saying. “But I don’t think they’re gonna find you. Were you wearing that hood up the whole time?”

Camila pulls back, running her fingers down the coat. “I don’t- I mean yeah, I think so. I remember not being able to see anything at the sides.”

“How long did you stand there?”

“Just a few minutes, and then I ran as fast as I could.” She closes her eyes. “There weren’t any cars, the street was empty. Oh!” She says, eyes snapping back open. “Road construction, Lauren. The road was closed and there weren’t any apartments.”

“This is good.”

Camila stares at her, bloodshot. “Why are you not mad about this?”

Lauren bites her tongue, absentmindedly. “I don’t know. I don’t feel anything.” She steps back and gazes at Camila, up and down. “Why’d you do it?”

“I don’t know, Lauren. I think I’m losing my mind.”

“Oh God, Camila”, she says, flattening her hands over Camila’s chest, feeling her pounding heart through her coat. “Oh God, I’m just glad you’re okay, I’m not mad, I’m just glad you’re okay…”

Fuck, Lauren has to get her to quit doing this.

Camila kisses her, hard, and it tastes like fear. She remembers that night after she dragged Camila off the rooftop and back home, and she’d woken up in absent morning light to the girl plucking along Beethoven, her lips soon finding Lauren’s in an evident distraction, just like they are now.

Lauren would never be able to testify why she lets Camila do it. She just feels relief sighing through her bones that she’s still here, not dead on the pavement, or shivering on some park bench, or crying in a cell. She might’ve done it because they’re still fine, for tonight anyway. _Yes, tonight is fine._

As if reading her mind, Camila pulls away, whispering against Lauren’s lips. _“We can talk about everything I did tomorrow, but let’s not think about it tonight. Let’s make tonight good.”_

Lauren mostly obliges, giving in to the small amount of risk that’s been creeping along her floors.

Camila’s coat falls at their feet, as does Lauren’s shirt, somehow. Her head is swimming through a thick haze like she’s drunk, the fog of lost memory confusing everything she does. _Oh, there’s something she’s forgetting, but how could she remember?_

A few spineless decisions later, fueled by her _impeccable_ luck, nothing separates them anymore. Lauren’s chilled by the draft coming in through the window, so much so that she can’t ignore it as it floods every inch of her body, but something hot fills her veins as Camila’s hand finds the center of her legs, and Lauren shudders into her shoulders.

She knows these thoughts, that she shouldn’t let it get this far. Camila burned down a fucking building, Camila burned…

But how sweet it is to have her here! How wonderful it is that Camila’s hers tonight! Maybe that’s the thing that propels her forward, physically and otherwise, into things she has no idea about. 

She’s acutely aware of the gathering pressure in every possible corner of her body, and friction of them, of innocence that knows no end. She feels herself building and building and touching the sky and _continuing_ , tasting the clouds on the edge of her tongue.

She must’ve come, because she’s lost this contact of Camila’s but she’s kissing her anyway. And she doesn’t remember, nor will she ever, making the decision to drag Camila down the dark hallway into the bedroom, feeling every protruding of the wood floors under her feet, creaking her intentions. The spirits of her home seem to tug her back, or try to, anyway. _No, Lauren, you’re not thinking clearly…_

 _Fuck them_ , Lauren thinks, slamming the door behind Camila, running her hands up and down her sides. 

She’s seen Camila naked before, for the same reasons amongst others, but never like this. Camila’s more than without clothing, she’s _bare_. There’s a remarkable difference between being just naked and stripped emotionally, and Lauren thinks there’s nothing left in this woman that she hasn’t seen. She’s caught Camila at her worst: using her nails to take off layer and layer of skin until she bleeds, banging on the piano keys and crying about things she can’t articulate, painted as the canvas on the wall, high under bath water, and she’s seen Camila flying at her best: teaching Lauren how to ice skate backwards, kissing her at the fireworks, smelling the roses and Camila’s sweet perfume in the middle of Washington Park. She loves it all, she loves all of _her_ , and she wouldn’t take it back for a second.

Camila doesn’t speak, and Lauren probably wouldn’t have let her if she tried. She pins Camila down onto her bed, _their_ bed, and feels every inch of her body, with her hands and her mouth and her soul. She kisses down Camila’s collarbones and her stomach, determined to draw this time out as long as she possibly could. 

Camila moans like she’s whispering a secret, and Lauren’s kissing her, over and over and over again. They breathe as one. Lauren’s heart constricts as Camila’s does, feeling her rhythm. There is no leading, no following, only the moments miles away from an old store burning and behind a shut bedroom door.

She wants no part of this to be slow, and nothing to pass by too quickly. For the first time in a long time, she meets Camila halfway, and in this exact second she accepts Camila; her downward spiral and everything, to occupy every part of her life until she can’t anymore. She’d deal with anything in the world if it meant that she got to hold these hands for another day.

Camila doesn’t hold on anymore. She comes with a long sigh and hitches in her breath, laced with the gravel of stress and the things that happened. Lauren runs her mouth back up to Camila’s lips, letting them linger, and then pulls them together at her side.

Lauren doesn’t know what time it is, because there is none. All Lauren sees is Camila, chest heaving gently, and all she hears is the sound of someone trying to catch their breath. 

She learns to quit flinching at every car that goes by, instead, braiding and unbraiding Camila’s hair down her back. She’s hopelessly in love, reveling quietly in the way Camila moves and everything she thinks. She loves how this mind works, pulling together astronomical connections and finding the beauty in things like math.

After a while, and just when she thinks Camila has fallen asleep, she hears a small voice.

“Lauren, can you do me a favor?”

Lauren nods, tangling their fingers together. “Anything.”

“Will you sing me to sleep?”

Lauren pulls them closer together, putting her hand on Camila’s chest over her shoulder. She feels Camila’s heart thrum gently with the song of her being and she readily agrees, clearing her throat.

 _“Sometimes I walk around town, looking at faces_  
_Wondering why their bodies go silly places_  
_Walking past the carpet mills, looking in and taking stills_  
_Your ass, it draws me in, like a Bermuda highway_

 _Oh, don’t carve me out_  
_Don’t let your silly dreams_  
_Fall in between the crack of the bed and the wall_

_Two times I fell asleep in a dirty basement_  
_Snoozing in cobwebs and the cement_  
_Sometimes I wonder why that meek guy got all the fame_  
_Maybe I’m to blame for his short, bitter, fucked up life.”_

Camila turns around in Lauren’s arms, leaning forward. She kisses her closed eyes, then her cheek and the corner of her lips. “Don’t ever stop singing, no matter what happens.”

Then she falls asleep.

Lauren had been holding her breath, she realizes, but she keeps it all in, just feeling it. There’s a space in the lungs that nobody feels until breathing isn’t an option anymore, and then there’s just the waiting for the green light of drowning to crystallize ahead of you and drag you even further down. The tiniest nerves alight the senses, and the only craving is _air_ , just the feeling of oxygen replenishing the part that was lost in that minute or so.

 _Let it go,_ she says to herself. _There will be another._

So she exhales, and something inside of her taps on her shoulder. It’s urgent in the dark, and after her experience in sanctuary, she accepts.

_Pray._

So she does, remembering countless nights at the table, hindering the illusion that the Jauregui house felt godless when nobody enforced the love she was supposed to feel. Was she supposed to love God, or fear him? She’d heard a thousand different theories, but none made sense. All she knew of God was the comfort of something driving the earth forward, that everything is interconnected, and that there’s a source and origin for everything. With that comfort resonating well in her heart like warm arms draped around her, forgetting already the mild crimes flickering in the distance, she prays.

_I messed up._

_Oh, we all know I messed up. Who am I? How did I get here? I don’t know much, but I know that I’m glad I still care._

_I love this woman. And I know you’ve said it’s wrong, that the prophets and all your people did too, so allow me to be the first to apologize for it. If this insults you, I don’t know, but it feels right now._

_I don’t want to face this with anger, but condemn me if you will. I’d walk a thousand miles through burning coals, the dirt of the world and all its sins smeared at my face amongst people laughing at me, humiliated for all time, but there’s someone who doesn’t deserve my fate. There’s someone who gets a little lost in her head, not misguided, but it’s hard for her to tell up from down and she goes up onto buildings thinking it’s the month before._

_Camila suffers in a way I’ll never know. I imagine everyone’s pain is unique, fitting them like no one understands, and her pain is no different. But this hurts me to see; it kills me. I don’t want to watch her shrink away anymore; I want her to walk in the light. I want her to greet the world with that smile she used to, like the only thing is her and that thing that’s causing the joy, and the hours that follow of her gushing about it. I want that one back. And if I can’t have her, well, please set her at ease._

_I don’t want to be selfish, but I can’t help it. Take all of this away, as much as is in your will, because it’s not worth it anymore to see her stumble, is it? And if anyone emulates the hope in the light on the ground of this earth, it’s her. Though neither of us are quite exactly the people you’d think of as ideal, I’ve seen her face. I know her sorrow. And please, it’s killing her every day._

_I know you’re up there, and I don’t want to be asking for too much. I just want you to hear me, to think about her, to think about all of this._

_There’s enough guilt in this place._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> During Camila's confession, I used "A Psychopath" by Lisa Germano, and the middle scene was "Ballad of Worms" by Cage. They were meant to horrify me; nothing else.
> 
> Lauren's song and the end scene song were one and the same; "Bermuda Highway" by My Morning Jacket, the live version.


	23. Chapter 23

Camila walks gently through a field of little daisies that Lauren swears she’s seen before; white dress sweeping on the tops of the dying dandelions, sweeping up their wishes to the world. 

There’s not a cloud in this sky as Camila walks gently closer, a soft light radiating off her body. It’s angelic.

The angel leans forward onto her knees, propping up Lauren’s head with her forefinger, looking benevolently into her eyes. The angel has the dust of peonies swept across her cheeks, and smiles with the all the stardust of the brilliant night showcasing itself to the world. She gives peace, breathing in the stresses of everyone and releasing life from her hands, flowers growing in her footsteps.

The angel smiles sadly, taking Lauren’s hand in her own. She uses the other to conjure up a small daisy, kissing it and putting it behind Lauren’s ear. Then she picks up Lauren’s other hand.

The brush of her lips is calming, like a sweet night in the hills, taking in all the rolling grass like emerald waves down the slope. 

The angel blinks a tear onto Lauren’s hands, and they glow for a moment. Lauren looks back up to see Camila, in a calm sorrow, shimmering against the sunlight.

The angel speaks, and her voice sounds like the gates of heaven on the golden street, carrying her back. 

“Goodbye, sweet Lauren.”

Lauren’s eyes drop in confusion, and she gently grasps at the hands of the angel. It starts to make sense at Camila fades away into a farewell in the sun.

It all makes sense now.

+++

Lauren jolts awake, not in a field, but in her sheets, the sky still dark with night.

The bed is empty.

She still feels Camila’s fingers on hers and she turns back to where the girl had been sleeping only hours earlier, ghosting the place for any idea.

There’s a piece of paper, folded in half, tucked against the pillow.

Lauren’s shaky hands lean over, taking the note. She leans back against the headboard and turns on the lamp to read. 

 

_Dear Lauren,_

 

_No amount of anything I can say will justify or even provide a reasonable explanation for what I’m doing. I know who you were when we started this, and who we are now. I know that you used to trust me to ice skate on my own, to drive seventy miles an hour, to leave the windows unlocked. I see that first day, our first day, in my brief moment of togetherness at the setting sun._

_You’re sleeping well tonight; I can see you take in a breath. In, out. It sounds a lot like singing, all rhythmic like your fingers on the piano, your feet in this house you made mine too. I still know the excellent feeling of your sheet music composure like fireworks on my skin, the way your voice sounds when you’re singing in the shower and I get myself up out of bed to listen behind the bathroom door. Your eyes light fires beneath my hands, your arms stretching miles for me to crawl into. Everything sounds like you; the mourning doves and cartwheels on the street; and it looks like you too. The way the lavender light of early morning spills in waves on the sheets and you’re all painted up in this brilliant purple, and I think right then; I’m so lucky to have her._

_You saved my life the second I laid my eyes on you. I noticed you for the millions of seconds before I said anything. I shared the depths of my soul with you, growing in my capacity to love and understand as I did. The walk with you was thousands of miles long, in a dream, and I loved every second I was there._

_When you wake up, I’ll be sleeping. I’ve felt that water before; it’s cold and it shakes you out of reality like nothing you’ve ever known. Had I delved sooner, I might not need the bottles._

_My brain felt littered with holes. All of this love you offered me, all of the songs and drinks and hours together wouldn’t fill the void I had in me for demise. You solved everything, Lauren, but the need for my destruction._

_You built me up again, but I’d fall. You gave me every spot in your soul for me, and gratefully I lived for all this time. Your heart is grand, bursting with life against the pallid hue that had been mine before the beginning of this year._

_Lauren, you were enough, you always have been. But these months, God, these months took a toll on me. My blood would get thicker as I got better, and I started staring out the window more, just wondering. How would I feel down there? What would happen to me? And once I knew, once I accepted it, I wandered outside tonight and claimed that for myself._

_I know you’ll never regret me, because I never regretted you. I never believed for a second that you fell short of me, because the shadow in your radiant sunlight would’ve outshined my little glow in an instant. And I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that I left you with the ghost of me, facing the world without me. I’m sorry I gave up our memories and the mind and body of you because I couldn’t do it anymore. I’m sorry I didn’t stick around anymore to try._

_I loved you with an overwhelming, violent sort of passion the first time we spoke. It wasn’t anything I’d ever felt before, but I craved more and more of it. I wanted your late nights, your music, and your love to be a part of me. I couldn’t have been luckier when it did._

_In a year from now, when all is said and done, I want you to look up at the daylight and think of me. Because even when I gave you away, your soul swam beside me, and carried me home. I went down with your love in my heart, and it was you, only you, that kept me breathing until I didn’t anymore._

_To my Lauren, the angel in the darkness, the notes lighting up our world, the arms lifting me through my burdens, I love you as much as I did the second I laid eyes on you, and forever more._

_This is goodbye, but only for now. And the next time I open my eyes, it’ll be you and I, singing loud together again in a land of bright sunlight and endless stretches of the earth’s majesty ahead of us, crowning us one more time. And you’ll hold me again, and I’ll wipe your tears away, and you can love me like there was no time that went by at all._

_With the sun and the stars, and all of world in between, I love you._

_I love you, Lauren Jauregui._

_Forever,_

_Camila._

+++

In the moments before she got there to when she hit the water, Camila believed many things.

And in the moments after, when the gentle waves carried her to the floor below, she still believed them.

She closes her eyes for just a minute. Like it was yesterday, she feels Lauren’s warm palm stroking her cheek, soothing her into a quiet sleep; a lullaby without the words. She can still hear Lauren singing in the distance, the words about the highway, and the countless hours they spent on the piano in a duet. She sees Lauren in the park, and a black dress rippling across the tops of her thighs like the wind on sand. She hears all the gentle whispers, the sound of all the drugs shattering against the water when she got rid of them last week. She hears the sound of pen scratching on paper just an hour ago, writing her only goodbye, her last words for the world, for her world.

Lauren.

Her name tastes so sweet.

With her body facing the wrong way on the bridge and her knees tucked up tight against her chest, she thanks God for it all. And then she stretches her arms up for him to take her, pushing off the side, hearing the wild wind of Seattle rush in her ears and take her down, down beneath the silent black swallows of the water.

Had anyone in that city closed their eyes that night, they’d have heard the gentle weeping of Death as he carried her soul away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dream: "Sweet Escape" - Paul Cardall
> 
> The letter, and the bridge: "Wait" - M83


	24. Chapter 24

_“Nine-one-one?”_

A gentle static.

_“Oh, you know where she is, don’t you?”_

“Excuse me?”

_“She’s just a kid, did you know that? She’s just a child and she’s all alone out there and I have to get her, do you understand…”_

“Where are you?”

“And I thought you could find anyone? I’m just here on the road, on all the icy roads just looking for someone else you tried to take. I asked you for help. Yeah, I asked you for help, and the first thing you tried to do was take her away from me. Fuck you. Fuck-“ 

Someone slams their hands on a steering wheel, and there’s static again. “What’s your name?”

_“Some God you are. If you think I’m ever going back in that church again, you’re making a heavy fool of yourself. I’m almost there, you know, and when I bring her back home, I’m going to tell her everything about you, and your whole bullshit joke of a holy façade; everyone wants to love you, yeah, but all you do is take and take and take and I can’t be the only one who’s about sick of it, sick of all this ‘mercy’. How is it mercy when you take all that time putting someone in the world just to rip them back out again like a seam you failed, like a thread loose that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of your whole shit show? Who sees past it? Do I? When I find Camila back on the bridge, scared half to tell because you held her hand the whole way there and then left her to find it all out on her own, what do I say? I tell her that this is all a sick fucking joke, and then I take her home, and we fall asleep tonight like nothing ever happened.”_

Someone screams so loud it almost ruptures her eardrums. “Hello, miss? What’s going on?” 

_“I’m almost to the bridge. I’m almost there, oh, I’ll see her in just a minute, and then we’re going home. I’ll laugh every day after this one when I remember that the God of Justice tried so desperately to take away the thing I live for, that he’ll wait for years after this to hear my voice again. I’ll laugh in the silence.”_

“Highway Patrol, please be alert of a young woman traveling at approximately fifty-five miles an hour toward the Tacoma Bridge arriving shortly. We may have an attempted suicide…”

She hears static and someone’s running on the snow, toward a lit up bridge and a cluster of five cars in the right lane, red and blue lights shining amongst them. 

_“Where is she?”_

“She’s there.”

_“I didn’t think you’d have the nerve to be playing this on me…”_

Someone’s feet are cold on the ground and they break through the crowd. 

_“Where is she?”_

And then Lauren feels it.

She throws the phone on the ground, running over to the edge. “No, no! Where is she? Where the fuck is she?”

She’s sprinting as fast as she can, gathering speed to leap over the side when a man wraps his arms around her, yanking her back. 

“No! You have to let me get her!” She’s screaming now, at the top of her lungs. “Why is nobody getting her? That water’s freezing! Fuck, someone get her!”

She sees a small boat heading to the spot in the river directly below where she stands, and the man whirls her around. “Miss, do you know her?”

Lauren nods furiously, trying to turn around, her senses numb with the cold and the ardent desperation that tries to fling her off the side of the bridge. “That’s Camila! That’s Camila, and you have to go get her.”

He holds her in place with arms of steel, cementing her to the ground where she stands. She tries everything, God, she tries everything, but she can’t even roll out of his grasp and another man, presumably his partner, speaks as quietly out of earshot of her as he can into his radio. “They got her?”

“They got her?” Lauren asks, only now aware of the tears freezing where they fall on her cheeks. “Is she okay?”

The officer sighs, relaxing his grip. “Ma’am-“

Lauren squirms out of his hold and runs over to the side, gloveless hands stinging against the concrete.

And there’s the boat, and a man on it and a diver in the river. The diver pulls something up out of the water, something that lost her smile and the last of her winter clothes, and Lauren screams.

“No, no, no, no!”

The officer pulls her back and she collapses into him, shrieking until she feels blood in her throat and her eyes are bruised with tears and she can’t make a sound anymore.

_“No…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Asleep" - The Smiths


	25. Chapter 25

Her heels sink in muddy snow, and the same snow clings to her face and then melts, in the absence of tears. She feels like she’s been crying for years, that the horrifying sadness keeping her up with headaches like lightning in the house hasn’t ever stopped. 

She can’t feel a thing, just walking and walking to a place she never wanted to be, and every step making this too real. And she imagines God laughing after all that she’s said, on their splendid clouds of gold, high enough for righteousness, watching as she carries her girlfriend’s coffin. She’s worked many a day in her life, and considers herself quite strong, but no weight has burdened her like this one.

She grips the steel, feeling a heartbroken spirit walking alongside her, so she holds it harder. _How interesting_ , she thinks, _holding hands like this! Could you ever imagine, Camila?_

She takes her eyes off the ground for a second. Immediately, Normani, Ally and Dinah look just as lost, carrying her too.

With everything she had, she’d walked back into the church three days ago, asking around for Thomas. And she gave him no explanation at the time; she’d only asked if he could do a funeral for a girl named Camila Cabello.

She didn’t even think he was a preacher, but he talked like he knew her. Like on that night when she’d stumbled in the sanctuary, he’d breathed in everything. He talked about her countless antics, and her sweet voice, and her reverence to geniuses before her time. Most of all, though, he spoke of Lauren, and how much they’d both given for the other. _Like the moon needs the sun, the sun needs the moon, and the heavy world needs them both,_ he said.

The sky turned gray with the afternoon storms when the first handful of dirt solidified her absence, and then the second, and the third. And when there was no evidence of the pretty girl above the ground anymore, Thomas slipped away, his head hung low.

Lauren sat down next to the stone, tracing the letters with her fingers. 

_Karla Camila Cabello, loved infinitely._

“Honey, let me take you home”, Ally says, sitting kneeling next to her in the mud.

Lauren grips Ally’s hands on her shoulder, looking up to find another pair of soaked brown eyes. “Oh, Ally, I can go home, can’t I? I can walk a thousand miles out of this country and back, and Camila can’t go another step. Did you ever ask why? Have you ever wondered why? Why does she have to die when I sit here like a parasite, wallowing in my own shit-pool of pity, when everything she ever did tried to make the world a better place? Why was I so prepared to die when I was older, with her? Why did I focus so much on leaving this world instead of living in it with the time we had? There were so many things she never did, and never once did I ever try to not be the anchor holding her to earth. And who was I to clip her wings? Who could she have been?”

Lauren rubs her eyes with the back of her hand, balling up into fists and slamming them on the ground. “No, no”, she says, standing up and walking away. “No, this makes no sense. And I don’t think I can handle this; I can’t do this without her. Oh my God, I can’t breathe…”

She finds herself breathing in scratchy fabric, and somebody’s heat all around her. She falls into them, before opening her burning eyes to realize she fell into all of them.

“You didn’t help her die, Lauren, you helped her live”, Dinah says, running her thumb over hers. 

“And as long as we all live, together, we won’t _ever_ forget her”, Normani promises, and it’s the crying in her voice that helps Lauren pull herself together, for all of them.

With their foreheads all pressed together, Lauren smiles, for just a moment. “Camila loved all of you, you know. Nothing could’ve ever made her happier than when we were all together, making music, late nights; all those memories. And she wouldn’t have said it, but you guys saved her too.”

She looks up at the setting sun, trying so hard to find the good in her broken heart. “Oh, she loved everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Prospekt's March / Poppyfields" - Coldplay


	26. Chapter 26

Lauren’s fingers play their last, lonely dance over the keys. 

She’s playing the same song over and over again, singing her part and Camila’s too. 

Earlier that night, she’d gone into the art room, and pulled down the sheet. There was Camila’s surprise, painted with every color in the world.

She’d drawn herself and Lauren, at every stage in their lives. She painted the beginning; her blushing at Lauren during rehearsals, with every special memory captured in detail on this huge page Lauren had given her. Lauren laughs at Camila’s illustration of her falling on the kitchen floor in July because she refused to take off her fuzzy socks, and that time when they went fishing and Camila managed to hook her arm. She draws Lauren with stacks of books surrounding her, often times in sarcasm, and Lauren can’t think of anything more wonderful than the things she saw right then.

She drew their last days together too, at Christmas and the time following. And then she drew the bridge, with herself standing on it in sunlight. _Oh, what will happen to her?_ She wrote.

The last frame was a drawing of the both of them walking through the park at night, Camila on Lauren’s back, arms slung around her neck, and laughing in her ear. And then there were these words. _A love, quite nearly until the end of time._

Lauren sighs into the song, playing her sorrows and apologies for the girl she hopes is listening. She sings for her too, singing her to sleep for the last time.

 _“They said you were the best_  
_But then they were only kids_  
_Then you would recall the deadly houses you grew up in_  
_Just because they knew your name_  
_Doesn’t mean they knew from where you came_  
_What a sad trick you thought that you had to play_  
_But I don’t blame you_

 _They never owned it_  
_And you never owed it to them anyway_

_I don’t blame you.”_

She sees the photograph of the two of them, tucked where the sheet music should be. It was a picture of Camila tucked between Lauren’s legs, playing with her shoestring, looking out onto the brilliance of the mountains. She stares at it, tears falling onto her fingers, singing the last line for the love of her life, as far away as she is.

_“I don’t blame you.”_

After that, she would never play again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "To Build a Home" - The Cinematic Orchestra
> 
> Here we all are, at the end.
> 
> I realize now that it's meaningless whether thousands of people like this story, or nobody does.
> 
> I learned a lot of things through writing this; about myself, about other people, about the world. It changed me in ways I hadn't expected it to, having only decided to write this because the idea had been festering in my brain for days.
> 
> I imagined myself telling this story directly to you. And to properly do so, I had to get myself in the state of mind of each scene. I watched videos. I looked at pictures. I read old newspapers and even brushed myself up on mathematics I hadn't thought about in a while. 
> 
> The end was the hardest part. I had to discard every last morsel of the humanity that wanted her to stay, because I had to finish the story. So, I killed off most of my heart. I watched 'Begotten'; a twenty-six year-old horror movie with no dialogue for the symbolism. I lit a candle in my room and turned the lights off and stood in the dark for half an hour. When I was through with it all, the story and everything, I didn't know what to do, so I sat there and cried.
> 
> I incorporated a lot of my own personal experiences with mental health and drug use. They were the underlying foundations for the things I expressed, though they weren't as large as they were in the story. I know the experience, and I know the fear.
> 
> This is also not, in any way intended, to make assumptions about any one of these people, because I don't know them personally. I know what I see in the interviews, and hear in the music. I see what's on the surface, and it's called fiction when I create the rest of it.
> 
> My hope for all of you is that you allow the creative spirit that's in everyone to ignite and take you anywhere in the world. Not often enough is it encouraged that you take flight from the things you've already established and make other places better too. This earth needs adventurous souls, not people trying to find their places in the dirt.
> 
> Below, I am offering platforms of social media for you. If you want to talk to me, complain, tell me jokes, laugh, yell at me, etc., you certainly may.
> 
> Twitter: @sideshowava  
> Tumblr: harm5ny  
> Instagram: @avasface  
> Email: avasimmons793@gmail.com
> 
> May wonderful things follow all of you, wherever you may go.


End file.
